Toyota Mini Part 5 - Questions and Answers

You've got a ton of choices when you're putting together a four by four. And just as many questions pop up. Should I buy new or used? What lockers work best? What are my steering options today on Xtreme 4x4 Q and a day? So grab a seat and get ready to retain some knowledge

today. On extreme, we're gonna be doing something just a little bit different. We're gonna be using our Toyota mini truck as a base to answer a bunch of specific questions that you guys have asked. You see, we build a ton of rigs here and although we go through each process pretty much step by step when a truck is done or even almost done like this one here, you guys flood us with emails with specific questions that you deserve to have answers to. And this truck is a perfect base vehicle to answer those specific questions because even though right now it's sitting on some 40 fours before this, it was a solid axle swapped, sitting on some 30 sevens. And before that,

it was bone stock.

The first question we're gonna cover is when do you make that final decision to finish welding your custom suspension, especially on a front axle. Now you see us do it in here all the time. At extreme, we put the suspension in and just lock it in with some good beefy tack welds and we do that for good reason. You don't wanna finish weld anything until the truck is almost 90% done.

You wanna make sure the drive train is in it, the correct spring rate is on it. The tires and wheels are on it and it's actually sitting under its own weight and you do that because of a couple key measurements. The first measurement obviously is your castor measurement. You wanna have a good amount of positive caster or leaning back of this inner sea. So the tires self center and the truck tracks down the road very well. If you just threw this inner sea on, welded, it welded your brackets on and didn't have the weight of the drive train in the truck. When you put the engine in and weigh down the springs, the

will tend to roll forward a little bit. You'll be constantly adjusting your link bars trying to get a good amount of caster and you could actually extend your

hem joints out so far that become a little bit weaker. So before you weld on anything for sure, make sure everything is done locked in, check your measurements three or four times, then you can go ahead and burn in this inner seat. As well as all your link brackets. That way you won't have any issues, the rear axle, it's a little bit easier.

We don't have alignment issues to worry about on the rear axle. The only real critical measurement here is going to be the pinion angle. Once the axle is installed on the truck, that's easily adjustable by the upper and lower length bars. But that doesn't mean we just put everything in place and weld it all the way in just like the front, we tack it in with good heavy tacks, get the truck at ride,

make sure everything looks good. And then we pull the axle out for finished welding. And the reason we do that has to do with torch position. If you can take the axle out of your project, flip it upside down, you can get good torch position on the bottom side of all these brackets. That means you'll have a good looking and more importantly, strong weld.

Once we had everything in place on our Toyota, we realized that we were off by a good five degrees on our alignment. So we'll turn the seat back,

moved a lot

before we weld it in for good

keeping with the theme of our axles. Another question we get asked a lot is how do we decide what locker and gear ratio to run in a specific project? And we've installed them all. We've used air lockers, mechanical lockers, lunch box lockers, some spools and we've even welded a couple axles up. And honestly, it really depends what you're going to do with your vehicle as to what locker you put in the axle. An old standby that we use a lot is the A RB air locker. And the reason we use this is what the air is applied. It is a true spool 100% locked left and right. But when you release that air supply, it's like an open differential. Now, that means it's great for short wheelbase rigs like Jeeps or even a little scout 808. When you want to get through those tight trails and you unlock both front and rear axle, they tend to turn a lot better. Also, if you're going to drive your vehicle on the street at all, an A RB air locker is a great option because of that open differential action.

One downfall of the air locker is all the extra things you need to do. You need to run all your airlines, you need to have a compressor or some type of air source and that can add to the cost. Now, another standby is the good old Detroit locker. Now, this is a 100% enclosed locker that everything is done inside the axle and it's a mechanical locker should not be confused with a posse

traction. It doesn't use clutches or plates when the wheels spin, it actually uses cones that lock together when it senses that wheel spin, making

almost as good as a spool. It's great for long wheelbase rigs like our Toyota because we're not really gonna be worrying about getting it through tight trails. The one downfall to the mechanical locker, there's not a lot of loose gravel or soil. They tend to lock and unlock. Same thing on the street when you're making those corners every now and then. The Detroit Locker can ratchet on and off. Can be somewhat annoying benefit is it's all in house inside the differential. You don't need anything extra to make it work. If you want to save a little bit of money, just don't get a lot

at all. Get a true spool like this one here locks both the axles together 100% power to both wheels all the time downfall to the spool. Obviously, you don't want to run it on the street. Any corner you make, you're gonna be dragging or spinning a tire, possibly break an axle shaft. Great. If you have a 100% trail vehicle, just like our little Toyota here. Now, gear ratio, a lot of it depends on the tire size. You're gonna run. We're using 488 gears from, we got from Ran

Ring and Pinion. Now that may sound like a relatively low ratio for a 44 inch tall tire. But you have to remember we have that stack reduction unit. We have a 10 to 1 in our transfer case so we can run a lower ratio gear like this. Get us a little bit more top speed. You just had a single transfer case in your ride and a 44 or taller. You might want to get into the 5 to 1 gear ratio. Now, a lot of the times you'll see us use all new parts when we rebuild an axle, but you don't always have to do that

after the break. How to save money without sacrificing strength. Stay tuned

today on extreme, we're back working on our Toyota mini truck. But at the same time, we're answering a bunch of questions that you guys usually crop up with after a project is done or when it's close to being finished, you send them to us on emails and they pop up on message boards all the time. Perfect example right here. When you use a fabricated nine inch housing, do you need to use all new parts? Well, the answer to that is no, quite often you'll see us use these brand new nodular iron

pop outs that we get from Randy's ring opinion. And when you're after the ultimate in strength and performance, they are a great option. But if you want to save a little bit of money, you can do what we've done here. We bought this used nine inch axle for 50 bucks, we'll reuse the dropout p

support and the yoke and just install new gears and the spool in the back, save us a little bit of money. But at the same time, we won't lose that much strength. Now, in our front axle, we have to use all new parts.

Our front end is gonna be treated to a high pinion gear set. You see, ever since we built this truck, we've been chasing a drive line issue. And the best way to solve that problem is with a high pinion gear set,

ringing pins come in two distinct styles and I have them both laid out here. If this is the ground and the red line represents the center of the axle. A standard rotation or low pinion gear said has the pin coming into the axle below the center line. Now, a high opinion or reverse rotation gear set does the exact opposite the pin enters the axle above the axle center line. Now, what that does for us gives us better angle on that front drive line, gives us more ground clearance for the front you join. Now, the downfall is it has to be 100% aftermarket in the Ford nine inch.

You see the nine inch was never available in a reverse rotation.

So Curry enterprises has this 100% aftermarket housing that's designed to accept a reverse rotation gear set that comes out of an Ifs Ford pickup truck. Now, that gear set is what's called a Ford 8.8 gear set. Now that gives us the high pinion, reverse rotation, but it means we do have to use all new parts.

What

because of the long wheelbase in our Toyota, we're gonna install a spool in the back and a mechanical locker up front.

That'll give us all the traction we need when we're crawling through the trails, still give us lots of maneuverability when things get tight.

Now, even though axles may top the list of questions, another popular topic from you guys is hydraulic steering. Everything from. How do you choose the size of ra M? How do you determine what type of lines to build and how do you mount your orbital valve? So we'll start right at the top with the type of ramps, steering rams come in two basic setups. You have a single action ra M which is basically fixed at one end, it's a hydraulic cylinder and the other end moves back and forth based on the turn

of the wheel and the orbital valve. The other one is a double acting cylinder or double ended ramp that moves back and forth and affects both steering arms with two small tire rods. Now benefits of each. Obviously the single ended ramp, it's a little bit easier to mount a lot easier to make and cost a little bit less. The double ended ramp is going to be a little bit more expensive. But the benefits to the double ended ramp is there's equal amounts of turning both left and Right. That makes it ideal for high speed

applications like rock racing, rock crawling. You'll see a lot more single ended rams being used and they're a little bit easier to mount. Now, the pumps, there's a couple of different kinds. There's a micro pump like we have on this bracket right here and the larger Saginaw style pump that we already have on our Toyota pickup truck. Now, these micro pumps are great for small cylinder engines, like maybe a four or a six cylinder. Like what would normally come in that truck. The problem with the big Saginaw pumps is they tend to stall down

those smaller motors when you're moving a lot of fluid through them. That's why you'll usually see the Saginaw pumps on V eights like we have here and coolers. Do you need them? Yeah, you should use them wherever you can. Basically keeping the power steering fluid cool is gonna make the system last a lot longer. It'll make the veins last longer in the pump, the seals last longer in your ram and it'll prevent the fluid from aerating or basically boiling. Keep your steering a lot more stiff. Now, where you mount the orbital, that's another tricky situation.

First, we're going to install a complete double ended ram hydraulic steering kit that we got from trail gear comes with everything we need, including all the brackets and the axle tr

when it comes to mounting the orbital valve. Honestly, you want to put it wherever you can easily attach the hydraulic line. Best case scenario though is to get it outside of the passenger compartment onto a frame rail like we are here that will protect the occupants from being burned by hot power steering fluid in case a line breaks.

Hey guys, welcome back to extreme, you know, no matter how in depth we go on a project, it seems that you guys always have specific questions sometimes about different detailed items on each rig we built. And that's what we're doing today. We're using our Toyota mini truck as an example to answer a bunch of those questions. Now, rear mounted radiators are pretty commonplace in most trail rigs out there. But just as many questions crop up on how to deal with these.

Your best option in the back of your rig is to solid mount the radiator. So it doesn't vibrate loose, also mount your electric fan with bolts instead of zip ties. So it doesn't damage the coolant tubes,

getting the fluid from the engine to the rear mounted radiator. You have a bunch of different options. You can build a transfer tube out of all steel tubing like this header pipe that you get here, cut it up and weld it together. You can join sections of tubing together like this with these convoluted radiator hoses if you don't want to do a lot of welding. But another option is one that we

most recently works well on our S 10 truckie for the rear mounted radiator net. We use this braided PV C tubing. Now, the nice thing about this is it handled the heat very well. But more importantly, because it's clear we were able to hunt down any air bubbles in the system just by looking through the tube.

Now, when you do mount a radiator in the back of your rig, you have to pay attention to the height of the rat

cap. It needs to be the highest point in the system or you'll end up with an air pocket trap somewhere between the rear mounted radiator and the engine. If you can't get your rad high enough, you need to add one of these. It's called an expansion tank. It basically relocates the radiator cap wherever you need it. If you mount one of these in your system and make it the highest point, you won't have any air pockets. No overheating,

getting fluid to a rear mounted radiator is not the only plumbing question. You guys have everything from fuel line to power steering hose. When you're talking about fuel line, a lot of guys go to the old standby, which is the good old rubber hose. Now, rubber fuel line hose will be marked on the side of it that it's designed to be used with gasoline. But what you can't use it for is fuel injection. It cannot handle the pressure

that an electric fuel pump puts out, it tends to fail. And if it can't handle that pressure, it certainly can't be used for transmission oil cooler lines for that, you need a very specific rubber hose. It'll be stamped on the side of it. Transmission oil cooler hose. And what makes it different is the amount of cording inside the hose. That means it can handle a higher pressure because the transmission oil sometimes gets up to 400 P si

and when you're talking about ef I, you need a type of braided hose. Now, there are two popular types are a cloth braided hose or a stainless braided hose. Now, the cloth hose is easier to manipulate around your chassis, but the braided hose can handle a little bit more pressure. And now these are sized a little bit different than standard fuel lines. They're sized on a dash series and they'll go from dash one to dash 16 and each dash is 1/16 of an inch. And what that means if you have a dash six

hose like this fitting here, the inside diameter is going to be 3/8 of an inch. Now, this type of hoses uses specialized fittings that are called A N fittings. Now, if you're gonna buy these for your system and use any angle pieces, go ahead and do yourself a favor and spring for the swivel version, what that means is when the line is fixed, you can move the end of the fitting around to adjust it to line up with the other fitting you need to screw it into.

Now, when you're talking about power steering hose, you have two different pressures. You have atmospheric pressure or just free flowing fluid and high pressure after it goes through the pump. Now, just free flowing fluid can just go through a standard hose and use one of these push lock connectors, no clamp needed. It's just pushed in place and stays where it's going to be. But once it gets through that pump and into the orbital valve, you basically have a full on hydraulic circuit, you need a dedicated hydraulic hose and you can get them made at any hydraulic shop where they'll crimp the end on for you with the right size fitting. But on the off road world, it's actually a little bit better to use these ones that you make yourself. You cut them to length, screw the outer end on and then screw the end in. The reason for that is if you have a failure in the field, it's easy to repair. You can simply cut that hose to a shorter length, reinstall the end, put it back together and get your rig back on the trail. Now, hopefully that answered all the questions you guys have been sending us. If you have some more, send them in. We'll do this again sometime

in a couple of minutes. The dodge returns to the shop for more tips on saving fuel on the street. Keep it right here.

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today on our fuel saving street truck, we're gonna be doing what's called a unit bearing elimination.

And what that does is it removes this solid bearing that the tire bolts to. Because on these modern solid axle, four wheel drive trucks, whether you're in four wheel drive or two wheel drive, driving down the road, you are always turning the shafts and all the different

components. That means more drag and less fuel efficiency. So we're going to be changing that out with a spin tech kit. And what that does is it converts the axle back over to the roller style bearings with the freewheeling hubs. We'll be able to unlock the tire and then it will just be the tire turning, no axle components get better fuel mileage.

Spin

tech industries makes these kits for either Fords or dodges any truck with a solid axle front and it's no harder to install than changing the brake rotor.

Now, this setup is actually gonna save us money a couple different ways every day when we drive it by eliminating the drive line from the tire wheels, gonna save us money at the pump. But more importantly, the unit bearing that we removed is very expensive on this dodge. This non serviceable unit costs almost $300. And you guys know that are running the

oversized wheels and tires like we are here, you go through those bearings about once every 8 to 12 months. The nice thing about the double roller bearings in this set up once a year, simply take it apart, repack them and they should be good for the life of the truck. All I have to do now is swap out the other side and then we'll take the truck out, run a couple tanks of fuel through it. But you know what we find.

Thanks for watching Extreme. See you next week.