FZJ80 Axles (Locking Diffs) Under a 40

[fjgoober]

Probably should mention somewhere after the coil buckets & prior to mounting the panhard arm I had to mount the stupid IFS Power steering gear box (It actually works pretty good but it has been a pain in the hind end, need to find an 80 gear box as is would be more hidden/protected by the frame.) I welded 1/2" plate on the outside, inside and front of the frame to box the frame. Alignment of the angle for the drag link, drill holes mount box. Fabricate an end for the drag link that will fit into my IFS Pitman arm and you have it. Sounds easy and only took a small paragraph to describe but in reality was approximately 4-6 hrs. fabrication time.....Well and involved as well. On the drag link to pitman arm. I cut off the fzj80 drag link end right after the stabilizer hole, then welded the IFS end on.

You can also see in this picture where I welded the winch base plate to the frame to tie in both frame rails just above the panhard arm.

 

[fjgoober]

Notice in a previous picture the 2x4 and ghetto c channel used to hold everything in place to have some type of reference point to fab from. Man I tell you everything is so out of whack you have to be pretty darn creative to find a reference point that's not beat or bent from the years of wear and tear (No doubt a PO had some abuse in there as well!!).

 

[fjgoober]

Did some more welding to attach the front hoop. Buddy that had the tube bender had a mig....He also wanted to weld as he didn't want any bad welds to reflect poorly on his work......Ooooookaaaaay. I'll just have a few and watch him work. Told him this was usually the opposite of what I experience. I'm usually the one doing all the work while everyone else is So I took every advantage I could get. I really would like to get a 240v mig, as it is I have to drag slag.

 

[fjgoober]

Next came the "sliders" on the side. You can see them in one of the pictures above. Put them just outside of the already banged up running boards. Someday I'll get back to straighten those out. By the way I used 1 3/4" tube. Almost went 2", had some 1 1/2" but I thought it looked like spaghetti against everything else.

The sliders came in to the frame 8" in front the running board. I debated on whether to weld them to a plate and bolt or weld the plate on to the frame. Ended up just welding them to the frame. The backside of the slider went into the hole for the cross bracing tube is located. Too good of a hole not to use. I am planning on making tube fenders for the rear tires and thought this would be a good area on the bend to tie into. (WOO!! WOO!! get rid of the ghetto flares However they really have worked pretty good and if you tear them off no big deal.) I probably should have welded a larger tube in there and welded the slider into that tube. You can see the gap............But Hell I want it done and I can always go back and do that later.

By the way plans are to cut all attachment points approximately 2" away from the frame and slide in 1 1/2" tubing weld it to the 1 3/4" inch and drill a hole in the fenders/sliders so I can pin the sliders/fenders making them relatively easy for disassembly. That's the plan anyways.

 

[fjgoober]

Inner and outer tubes for fender.

This was tough. I wanted to keep the Toyota lines and how aggressive the wide front fenders look coming back into the running boards. I always tell the guys that the 40's look like a tiger with both paws out there ready to pounce on something. Everyone around here thinks I'm nuts but I'm sure there are guys/gals on here that will agree........These things look cool!!!

NOTE on bending tubing (I'm sure lot's of you guys already know this but my buddy showed me this.)
I found that if you take #9 gauge wire and chuck it up in a drill, have someone hold the other end and spin the wire you can make it pretty stiff. The wire works great for mocking up and tweaking to get exactly the angles and length you want.

Finally got what we thought looked good, recorded measurements and bent tube. Welded then stretched sheet metal. Didn't take any pictures on this process, but here's what it turned out to look like.

 

[fjgoober]

That picture was taken after we played in the water with it. You can see the moss on the front end. The actually went out with me. She hates anything vertical but didn't mind going through water that came into the cab, she did have her feet on the dash though.

With the bigger tires I noticed the clutch was slipping. Went ahead and put a new clutch in it but that's another story. Came real close when I had the transmission and transfer case out to ordering an Orion transfer case. I'm debating about it and will probably end up doing that.

 

[fjgoober]

More moss

 

[fjgoober]

Precut width (If anyone's interested I would have to measure as I don't remember the widths.) and pretty much for the most part the length. Fitted sheet metal up to tubing and drew out the radius for the turn. Cut it out (Man that plasma is nice for this!!) and tack welded it on. Like a lot of projects, I still haven't finished this part as we've been playing with it too much. It's functional so we use it. You can tell that also by the fact nothing is primered nor painted but flash rust!! We'll get to that when I cut and weld the 1 1/2" in for now we're gonna play.

 

[fjgoober]

Kind of looks like Sanford and Son around my place........Can't talk myself into getting rid of anything. I might need it. Friends tell me there's a show about people like me it's called.......Hoarders.

 

[fjgoober]

Here's a couple of pics of the front view.

 

[fjgoober]

Took the drive shaft down and had it built to length needed. $150 Thought I could weld it myself but decided to have a professional do it. But before this and about the time I'm welding on the shock towers is where I realized by total retarded mistake.

Actually, another buddy of mine came over and was inspecting my work. His comment was almost exactly this: "Pretty nice but don't you think the pinion bearing/gear ought to have some oil on it?" WTF??? I crawled out from welding and looked at what he was talking about. Sure enough my thinking that the coil springs were perpendicular to the frame was dead wrong as my pinion gear was too high above the oil fill. It might get a little splash here and there but it was not right and I guarantee that bearing would fail. There were not enough walls to slam by fat head against. I never even looked at it when I was setting everything up.

You can see it in the drive line angle. I don't have a picture of it and it's raining now but there is more angle on the front U-joint than what should be. It's not bad and I've had it out wheeling several times since then but I will need to fix it.

Temporary fix: Drilled and tapped new oil fill hole.

Permanent Fix:
Two Options:
1) Cut out my rear radius arm attachment points and lower them.
2) Do away with the stock radius arms and build a three point utilizing heim joints and making it adjustable to rotate axle. I hate getting rid of the stock radius arms but in the long run I will probably get more travel this way.

I will be going with Option 2 as I really like how the rear attachment is out of the way.

 

[fjgoober]

Has anybody caught the fact that I don't have any limiting on travel other than the shocks. Need to put that on the to do list.

 

[Weber Sarge]

I like it , you'll appreciate an 80 series box better than the IFS unit for sure , just mostly for protection and beef . Learn to run some 7018 rod , eliminates slag drag and better strength .
Might want to use eye type shocks vs pin type , better alignment and less binding .
Sarge

 

[fjgoober]

Next is wiring up the Toyota E-Lockers but not tonight.

 

[gpfj40]

I like it, you have gone a lot heavier duty than I have. The stance looks aggressive. You sure have moved quick, you must have spent lots of time sitting on that pail drinking beer staring at your rig planning!

I installed a fzj80 e-locker axle in the rear of my 40 and love it (went leaf springs and now wish I would have done coil! I will go to coils on the rear at a later date). Full floating axles, wider stance and bigger beefier axle altogether. I bought both the front and rear e-locking axles from a buddy. I've been wanting to put the front 80 e-locker in but haven't had the time.

I was looking at it earlier this evening and decided on how to do it. Went on mud and stumbled across your thread. The way you are doing the front is exactly how I envisioned just 45 minutes ago sitting on a 5 gallon bucket drinking a beer!! The only difference is that I was thinking of getting the adjustable buckets as I thought it might provide flexibility in ride height as well as on and off road driving.

I have to say that I am very impressed with your ingenuity and fabrication skills. Great Job. I am subscribed to this thread. Would love to see more pictures of the front end suspension and attachments. Did you cross brace from frame rail to frame rail the panhard attachment on the frame as Toyota did on the 80? Would love to see pictures of what you did in that area!! After viewing your thread I think the wisest thing for me is to follow you a week behind you!!!! Let you solve all the problems and I would provide you the greatest flattery of all and copy it!!

Love what your doing!!

 

[fjgoober]

Sarge,

Went back to my buddy that owns the salvage yard where I got the diffs from for the gear box and he had already sold it online. Someone down in Texas bought the motor, they drove up to pick it up. But yes I want to put an 80 box in there or at least a 60. Room is going to be a little tight as Toyota didn't use 1/2" steel plate to build their coil buckets. We'll figure something out.

gpfj40,

Thanks for the compliment. It is stout and handles well on the trail. Lockers in the front are definitely WOW factor. Don't like to get it above 50 mph on the highway until I fix the negative castor with the heim joints.

The reason it looks like it's going together so fast is I'm posting this after the fact. Did most of the work months ago. I've been wanting to do this and researched it a bunch, there's other guys that have done it (Don't know about Toyota E-Lockers in the front and rear but I'm sure someone already has.) but the pictures with an all the way through thread was not to be found. You would find pictures of where guys started but the thread was never finished. (We've all been guilty of that.) So I thought I would take pictures and try to document it.

Problem with posting it after you've already done it is that you tend to forget where you messed up and what you had to do to overcome the screw up. Which makes it harder for the guy who comes along behind you.

 

[gpfj40]

oh well that makes more sense, none the less covering this in a couple months is still a lot of work.

As I consider you front axle angle problems, it reminds me of the thoughts and trial and error I went through. The frame slopes up as you move the axle forward which makes the pinion and castor angle worse as you go forward. The 80 radius arms are at a fixed angle to the pinion/caster so the only way to fix this is to drop the rear mounts (which wouldn’t be good on a built rig like yours) or ditch the radius arms for a 3 link set up. There is no doubt the 3 link is the way to go for wheeling, the only reason I didn’t go that way is I am looking for good road manors so I attempted to replicate the stock 80 geometry. There is lots of discussion on mud about the problems lifting 80 front ends and I think that is similar to where you are at based on the angles.

Your plate coil buckets are making me think mine are way too light, I hope I don’t find out the hard way....

 

[lcwizard]

Looks like a blast. I remember when 40's were common enough and cheap enough that you could purpose build them for fun without
feeling like you needed to go to confession for disturbing even it's the most insignificant detail .

 

[fjgoober]

Wiring is pretty straight forward. There's an old discussion when on here (80's section) where guys were arguing whether or not relays were needed. Several guys went with just a DPDT switch. This is what I did. My wire colors were not the same as any FSM or any other wiring diagram I've seen. However, you really don't need one because you can figure through deductive reasoning/process of elimination. One wire locks another wire unlocks and the rest are sensors to determine whether it's lock or unlocked. Going off memory here as with this whole write up. Probably would have been a much more in depth write up if I
wrote it as I was doing it.

 

[fjgoober]

Picture of the switches in the dash. Red for rear and Green for the front. As seen from the wiring diagram the light is illuminated when the locker is locked.