Got the fuel tank plumbed and wired, mocking up with ratchet straps, exhaust needs to be reconfigured to avoid interference. 1uz has no spark so I’m diagnosing that.
Found a few chunks that didn’t make it out of the drain hole. Confirmed…the noise was coming from the rear end. You can see the pinion gear that got the lightweight treatment in the second pic.
Got the axle from the other 60 torn down. Plan is to install this one and put the Detroit locker I removed from my 40 into the other diff for the off road 60. Will try to hammer the base plates for the drums back into shape but maybe it’s time for a disc conversion.
Turns out the horrible noise is likely coming from the rear end. I noticed some weird play when I was pulling the driveshaft and when I drained the fluid (which probably only has 1000 miles since I last changed it) I saw glitter and chunks. Maybe time for a locker?
Well I got everything installed, the transmission is shifting great, but I think the transfer case has a bad bearing on the output shaft, lots of noise. I’ll be replacing that and shortening the driveshaft once again.
Here’s what I ended up with, along with some photos I made to send to my cruiser buddies to explain the issue. Seems odd of them to just leave it open. Maybe it’s a “if you don’t know you shouldn’t be doing it yourself” kind of thing. Who knows.
The guy’s shop is called transmission’s garage. He is in Beaumont. Price was reasonable, I haven’t installed it yet but I’ll update the post when I do.