SST question

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yea thats the opposite of what I was expecting. I thought there were 3 posts coming out of what you needed to take off, and Toyota was just trying to sell you a Super Special Tool. That is indeed special.

I think what this specialty tool is needed for is if you completely gut the rear axle for a rebuild. At that point it would be necessary. For a rear brake job, it's a simple pad slap. :doh: Remove the caliper, whack the rotor with a mallet and it pops free into your hands. No seals, bearings, greasy mess everywhere. Done in 10 minutes per side.

I feel dumb for buying it. Perhaps it may find it's way onto the mud classifieds.:bang:
 
How much did u buy it?

Sent from my hawn finga using IH8MUD
 
I would just keep it.

Sent from my hawn finga using IH8MUD
 
Double post lol
 
Im lookin forward to seein it finished

We had another shop session yesterday (8+ hours!) and managed to get my brothers lift installed on the Rubicon, and about 90% of the work completed for the winch install. We ran into a snag with the troubleshooting last night after everything was installed and decided to wait for the next session to finish it, as he had to get up and go to work in 8 hours lol.

The fitting of the plate to my bumper was super easy, as I had already trimmed my bumper and by pure luck the top of the fairlead fit flush against the trimmed bottom of my bumper. We got the new holes drilled in the plate for mounting to the frame (missed one by a quarter inch and spent some time hogging out the hole to make it work).

Next came the wiring. I wanted a divorced solenoid box located higher up in the engine bay, away from all but the deepest water during crossings. We decided to mount the box in the little space between the battery and the headlight. We looked at the cable lengths coming from the solenoid box and determined that the black and yellow (its black but has a yellow insulating boot on it) cables needed to be lengthened to 6 ft in length. A quick trip to the auto parts store for two cables and 4 new ends got us what we needed. The rewire was fairly straight forward (remains to be seen if I did it correctly lol) and we started work on the mounting bracket for its new home in front of the battery.

We took the existing bracket that comes mounted to the back of the solenoid box and hammered it flat for easier reshaping. We decided to weld it to the battery tie down bar so the box would be secure but easily removable if a headlight needed to be changed. We then bent to it fit the tie down bar and made our welds. A note here: both pieces of metal are pretty questionable metallurgy, so should you go this route- burn it in slow and cold. We blew a little hole in the tie down bar getting the heat right.

Once the boogers were ground off and the bracket was painted, the bracket was reinstalled on the back of the box. A little RTV was added to the lid to seal up the box nicely, and the box was mounted in its new home under the hood.

We were extremely happy with how sanitary the install looks, and the box fits in there next to the Optima battery perfectly.

Unfortunately the testing didn't go too well and something was amiss. Neither the winch or the solenoid box responded to the input from the handheld controller... DOH!

We were out of time so we remounted the bumper and buttoned things up for the night.

I'm going to install my wireless winch controller and see if its the handheld unit that's the problem. From there I'll just break out the multimeter and trace the current upstream to find out what went wrong.

Pictures coming later today, and I'll update you with what I find went wrong. Probably a boneheaded mistake on my part somewhere along the line lol.
 
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Crappy cellphone picture at mid point where we were starting the wiring.

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The finished product- I'm remounting the license plate higher up when I pick up some screws.


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I removed the vent insert in the bumper for access to the control lever. Glad I reclocked the lever- there's no way it would have had enough clearance.




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Here is the divorced solenoid box mounted in the battery tray.



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I still haven't had time to troubleshoot the wiring yet...
But yes I am aware that the main power cable is not connected to the battery- didn't want to risk a fire if it had been wired incorrectly.

ForumRunner_20130421_151058.webp


ForumRunner_20130421_151619.webp


ForumRunner_20130421_152301.webp


ForumRunner_20130421_152322.webp


ForumRunner_20130421_152423.webp
 
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Just realized I never did report back on what the problem was with the winch wiring.

Turns out I got all dyslexic with the solenoid box while rewiring it and switched two of the leads. Derp.

Works great now!
 

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