I am starting to wheel my tacoma on a regular basis and am paranoid about breaking down on a gnarly trail with an obstacle behind me and ahead where recovery by another vehicle would be very difficult.
I want to hear some accounts of people experiencing major break downs such as axle failure, engine, anothing that paralyzed the truck and how you fixed it on the trail or got it back to civilization.
Maybe try some other "vehicle make" sections besides the Toyota Section... breakdowns are pretty rare in these parts...not so rare in others
eepwall:
In all seriousness, how "EXTREME" are we talking???
If you're worried about breakage on very technical rocky trails then an SAS (solid Axle Swap) would be the best place to start. The IFS on new Toyotas is not as tough as the old T-bar system on the Mini-truck/4Runner of old. Typicaly in extreme cases the IFS and it's accompanying CV-joints seems to be the weakest link. Keep in mind thought that unless you're running bigger tires and lower gears failure is less likely, but does happen. Big tires are what kills IFS the easiest, but putting crawler gears in your T-case along with an Auto tranny can give you the torque multiplication needed to beak the axles or CV's.
Other than that most everything in any body on frame Toyota 4x4 is about as robust as it comes in the 4x4 world. It's very rare to see failures anywhere but in the driveline in typical "too much gas not enough sense" fashion.
Also, maybe don't wheel alone in places where you can't get another truck in to recover you. either that or just run f/r winches and you'll be able to catterpillar yourself out in a pinch.
cheers
Dave
