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I posted this somewhat controversial thread in November.
Low Cost Low Gears - IH8MUD.com Forum
After wheeling a bit my co-pilot and I found we wanted lower gears. The stock crawl ratio is about 28:1, so we had to speed a bit up steeps to keep the revs up. Then, coming down I had to use the brakes some. On steep downhill dunes that will toss you sideways.
So, my solution was to aquire an H41 from Marks Off Road Home Page and mate it to a 3-speed transfer case. Member MustardFJ40 is upgrading to an Orion and he sold me his case for a great price and helped me with some tools and parts. It came complete with the gear and bearing to make it work with the four speed.
Much thanks to D'Animal for hauling my tranny around with him for over a week on it's long trek from Burbank to Morgan Hill via Vegas and Exeter.
It turns out that there's a '78 only (?) top-gear switch on the top cover. I wanted to retain that so I swapped that over to the H41 and muddled my way through connecting the case and the tranny. I didn't take a lot of pictures. Poser's thread is way better than anything I would have come up with. Speaking of Mr. P, you may recognize his transfer case saver on there.
My little helper and I cleaned up a bunch of junk in the garage and made a proper work area. I often just work out in the driveway, but rain was forcast and I didn't have time to wait it out.
I had to separate my old transfer case to reuse the speedo parts, a couple spacers from the input shaft and the covers.
I really wanted to use the stronger front output housing from the '78 case, but I stopped short of that. The 3 speed is all together, and tearing into it for a part that is only marginally stronger isn't on the top of my list right now. Maybe I'll keep it and do it later.
The old tranny and case were leaky as is my engine, so there was some pretty serious cleaning to do. Motivation was supplied by the local El Toro Brewery and their Centennial Ale. Yum. Foreground left in the first picture.
As of this writing the whole thing is about 4" from being installed, as you can see. It's precariously sitting on the tranny jack waiting for me to find some time to finish. I've got a minor 4 wheeling opportunity this weekend for which I'd really like to have it finished. If you've ever done one by yourself before, you know my pain. It's close. I waited too long to install the clips onto the throw out bearing and I may have to back it off a bit to make room.
Even though I try to keep my rig stock, I really like this mod. It's all Toyota and I'm going from 28:1 to 48:1 crawl ratio. I also cut and bent the transfer case shifter bracket so I could get 2wd neutral and 2wd low.
I've got less than $1200 into this, including lunch for D'Animal, the transfer case saver, various rentals, oil and other misc hw store trips. I sold the POs spare he-said-under-30k-miles '78 h42/case for $500, complete from shifters to e-brake to help pay for it. I suspect I can get another $150 for the tranny and transfer case parts I have left.
It's taking me about twice the time I expected. MustardFJ40 and I took a few hours to fab a puller to separate his old case from his h41. The garage cleaning was unplanned. My Impala ('96 SS) died on a parts run and I had to be rescued. I broke one rental puller trying to get the pilot bearing out and had to fabricate a tool to add to the 2nd one I found to get that little ***** out of there. That was no fun. Finally, getting it all back together is like one of those little wire puzzles. They look easy enough, but you have to do everything just right to get it to go together.
