The Madness Continues!!!!! - Phase II

The awesome that was the Dually axle lasted about 4 months, after that I wanted MOAR AWESOME!!!!!!!! I wanted 4x4 capabilities! However I wanted to do 4x4 right, and that meant only one thing.....

SOLID FRONT AXLE!!!!!!!!!!

Amongst the Mini truck community and general wheeling comunity, the Toyota solid front axle is legendary (barring HD axle swaps such as a Dana 60 or the like), for it's stock durability and it's mod-ability (that's a thing right?). However this axle was only available for 6 years on Toyota pickups. the first gen Toyota pickup 4x4 had them it's entire model run (1979-1983 M.Y.), the Gen II toyota pickup only came with a solid front axle in the first two years of the run (1984-1985 M.Y.), that was before I was born. As you can imagine those trucks are a tad rare and even harder to locate one for sale at a bargain price...and the one I wanted came from those last two years only, and I wanted an ex-cab model.... in a word: slim pickings. After hunting around on craigslist for two months I located the sacrificial lamb. All the way out in Idaho, after convincing read tricking) my dad into driving 7 hours out to Idaho to see the truck with a u-haul trailer and another 7 hours back home with the rust bucket of a sacrifice, I had what I needed to take The Revenant to the next level!

It wasn't much to look at, but it had a decent chassis and THIS:

THAT is the legendary toyota solid front axle!!!!!

Now hold on a sec there matey! Why would I want to go through all this searching and hunting just to get a solid front axle? Solid axles are old school tech, they do not lend themselves well to on road handling, they do not make for a very soft ride, and they are not significantly better than an independent suspension in most off road terrain. Never mind how heavy a solid axle set up is...

In a word: reliability

Solid axles can go through an apocalypse of a beating before running a significant risk of failure. In a Solid axle the actual half shafts that deliver torque and power to the wheels are fully encased and have no risk of various bits of grit chipping them increasing the risk of axle failure. Also there are fewer moving parts which as a rule means maintenance is easier and cheaper. In the case of the Toyota solid front axle vs the Toyota independent suspension (which is what replaced the solid axle in 1986) the actual half shafts are bigger (30 spline hubs vs. 27 spline hubs) and the front ring gear is an 8 inch ring gear rather than the 7.5 inch ring gear used in the IFS set up in later models. never mind that having two fewer cv joints means less total torque loss along the axle itself. Also the hubs are full float on the front axle as well, which also leads to better reliability and durability

Considering my goals for this truck, where weight really isn't a concern, and I want something reliable and excessively durable capable of carrying heavy loads over all but the harshest of off road terrains. I think it is obvious why the solid front axle is the better choice by far.

It took the entire summer of 2012 to tear down, rebuild, replace, carryover, and reassemble The Revenant into a one of a kind, 4x4 1-ton dually pickup with a solid front axle.

I began with rebuilding the front axle

Cleaning it off and painting it

Upgrading the brakes

Then I moved to gutting the interior in preparation for modifying the wiring harness to accept the fuel injected engine from the 2wd truck:

I also took the time to clean out the inside and get rid of the dead mouse that had died in the air system:

Next it was time to swap in the dually axle:

But before it could go in it needed the 3rd member (diff carrier) that matched the front axle. See with a 4x4, you need to make sure that the front and rear ring and pinion ratios match (assuming similar sized tires/wheels front and rear) otherwise when you shift into 4x4 mode you torsionally load the drive line, because of the different rates of rotation in the front and rear axles, which then would lead to snapped drivelines or more likely a blown up transfer case. So out with the old and in with the... old?

Now dear reader at this point you might be thinking I'm COMPLETELY BONKERS, mixing and matching all these random parts to make this truck, throwing in a heavy duty axle into a little 4x4 mini truck...you might even be thinking "what's so great about this 'Dually Axle' anyways?!? Isn't the stock 4x4 axle on this truck good enough?!"

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dually axle is pure WIN, but I'll let the below picture do the talking, the black axle is the dually axle and the tan/dirty/rusted one is the stock 1984 4x4 rear axle

While the center diff area might be similar (they both use an 8 inch ring gear, 4.11 ratio if you care to know) you might notice that the actual axle tubes are a bit thicker on the dually, and then there are the hubs which, frankly, speak for themselves.

Now it was time to swap out the engine. The 4x4 had a poorly tuned carburated 22R, the engine I was putting into it at this time was the fuel injected 22R-E, same base engine, just fuel injected. I'm personally not a huge fan of carburated engines in general, they are overly fussy, and don't deliver great amounts of power and easily fall out of tune. modern fuel injected engines are just in general much better... but you are certainly entitled to your own opinion

Out with the old:

and in with the new (ish):

Once that was done it was time to finish up some of the body work, and swapping the pickup bed (and just gawking at how awesome the dually axle is all over again):

Then the day of Doom came.... IT LIVES!!!!!!

you can see what is left of the 2WD husk of a truck on the left. but the truck still needed painting and then it was time to drive it cross country so I could get to school on time!

This is how the truck looked as it took me cross country the first time, clearly madder than the Dually 1-Ton 2WD, but over the course of the next year The Revenant would really begin to earn it's horns...