mcgaskins
SILVER Star
So things haven't been completely peaches and cream. After a 5k mile trip down and up the Baja Peninsula she started to protest. I suppose I should be thankful they all happened within a few hours of home rather than the bottom of Baja? First up was a dead battery in the Swell during the Outlaws Run in early December. Normally not worthy of even mentioning but this was different. It was a newer battery but nothing exotic, I've been holding off on finishing my dual battery system until the ARB Linx system comes out and as such I had a standard AutoZone lead acid battery installed. I went to start it on our final day of camp and the dash cluster lit up for just a brief second as I pressed the start button and then nothing. Like nothing nothing. Zero response to the ignition switch, no lights or headlights, door locks were inop, etc. It was dead in the water. We tried Jackson's battery jump pack and it didn't respond to that at all. We started trouble shooting and found out that my battery wasn't just dead, it was causing a short so it wouldn't jump from a jump pack or even Treeroot's FZJ80 with his dual batteries paired. Remember that electric solenoid rear hatch all 200's come equipped with? Well without power and I couldn't open my hatch, which mean I couldn't open my tailgate, which means I couldn't open my drawers, which means no access to my tools... great. Thankfully I was with some prepared guys and tools weren't scarce.
At least it was parked in a shady spot
To confirm our analysis we took a battery out of Treeroot's 80 and temporarily mounted it in mine, we now had power such as dash lights, functioning ACC mode, headlights and thankfully the ability to open my rear hatch but zero crank and my start switch light wasn't illuminating. Did both my vehicle battery and FOB battery die simultaneously? Very unlikely. Jackson (also a 200 owner) and I ran through some random fixes, swapping relays, checking fuses and testing the voltage on my FOB battery, everything was in check. On a whim we pulled out the factory owners manual (who does that right?) and found that there is a reset procedure for the immobilizer system. Sure enough we followed the steps and after some time it reset and fired to life with the donor battery under the hood.
Remember these steps
So I needed a new battery. Jason ran me into Castle Dale, an hour away. The NAPA had battery in stock and I was happy to pay them for it
Next up was this this lit up dash disaster
Fast forward a few months and I'm driving over to the machine shop on a rainy afternoon, rushing to snag some parts. Just as I roll around a slight left sweeper at ~40 mph my brakes go bonkers. The dash is lit up with error lights and the ABS is modulating all over the place, much like the feeling of Crawl Control in use. I'm able to get off the road and pop the hood, thinking I'm going to see my brake master/booster purging fluid or melting, nothing. I quickly look over all of the brake hard lines and hoses and everything is tight and in tact, weird. I restart and it drives fine outside of the lights and lack of ABS (which also prevents use of Low Range by the way), so I get it home and park it. It's a few days before I have a chance to troubleshoot but my code reader indicates a few ABS errors. I reset them and all of them stay away with the exception of a LH Rear ABS Speed Sensor code, it would come back on within a few seconds of movement or just stayed on with each attempted reset. I crossed my fingers it was just a bad ABS sensor and got a pair of rear sensors ordered. They arrived and I pulled out the LH rear and found it a tad dirty on the end but nothing crazy odd. They should be running in a sealed part of the axle assembly with a sealed bearing on the outside and a seal on the axle housing side. The grease I encountered was a bit odd but I chalked it up to a bit of weeping at the rear seal and gunk accumulating in the end of the tube, think dirty gear lube.
With the new sensor installed and the wiring inspected, I reset the computer once again and crossed my fingers. Sadly I didn't even make it out of the shop before my dash was lit back up and the LH sensor code was back on. Boo! I happened to be with my buddy Brian who is a mastertech at one of the local Toyota dealerships and he offered to take a look at it on their computer and see if they were getting any signal out of the sensors, new or old. That would at least verify it was bad sensors (new one too), a wiring failure between the sensor and the ECU or something in the axle itself. He confirmed my fears after a short inspection and it was in the axle. Knowing that, he ran his bore scope into the housing via the sensors hole, something wasn't right, there were what appeared to be debris chunks in the housing. More boo! I ciompiled all the parts I would need and snagged the SST we build for separating the rear shaft and bearing assembly, not super easy task. We built the tool for the regular rear bearings swaps we do on Monica (the Canguro Racing 200) and it's since seen a bunch of use, mine was just the latest axle needing bearings.
So, that isn't right...
We made quick work of the tear down, modified the backing plates so we didn't have to crack open the rear brake fluid and slide out the LH shaft. The axle bearing was hosed, fully failing. The design incorporates a magnetic ring as the inner face of the inner bearing, that magnet had broken into pieces and the ball bearings were rolling loosely in the void. Fortunately they can't migrate further inward towards the diff as there is a seal and baffle that would prevent it. OK, so I could get by with a single bearing assembly and a few seals on that side but what did the other side look like? And even if it looked good from the outside, what would it look like inside the bearing? I opted to just replace them both and ended up ordering both brake backing plates at the same time. Both of mine had some corrosion/rust forming between the tin brake dust cover and the caliper bracket it's spot welded too. The LH side was much worse and after a bit of poking I had a full rust hole through the plate.
Decent RH bearing top left, the bad bearing and it's parts are on the right.
The rusty backing plate. The vehicle is overall really clean underneath but that laminated design is rust prone
A bucket of fun, ARB equipped diff with new carrier bearings.
While I was waiting for the backing plates to arrive I got a core rear stock diff and ARB in the hands of my diff guru, I figured it was a great time to add an Air Locker to the rear axle. With all the parts in hand it went together in a few hours, plumbed the ARB, assembled the rear shafts and filled it with fluid. The ultimate test... any lights? Zero
Thanks for taking the time to type all of this up! Looking back, would you say there was any warning signs the rear axle bearing and backing plates were failing? I wonder if there's a way to inspect or verify the condition of the components short of a pretty thorough tear down. Should the bearings and backing plates be considered a routine maintenance item above a certain mileage? Glad to see at least you're getting an ARB out of the ordeal!
