ok so a little update-
well i found out i have two different gear ratios in my diffs -long story, but its my fault, and i didnt figure this out untill friday when we had a good deal of snow and ice here in the PNW... yeah i got 4:10s in the front and i think 4:30s in the back, ill know more later today when i pull them, and replace them with the 4:10s i just bought.
so for those of you who dont know, always count teeth when dealing with toyota gears ect. do not just measure the thickness of the ring gear. factory toyota gears all in the two common ratios 4:10 and 4:30 are the same thickness, the difference is in the number of teeth. toyota does this to keep pinion gears the same size and retain strength in them. most aftermarket gear sets will make the pinion larger or smaller, and increase or decrease ring gear thickness to change ratios, toyota does not do this, they keep the pinion ring gear the same size. im not sure about the 4:56 gears but i suspect they do that with those as well. i know the 4:88 factory toyota diffs the ring gear is the same thickness as the 4:10, but the differential itself has a thicker flange to push it over to the smaller pinion(this to my knowledge is the only variance in the size of pinion gears, all ofthers just change the number of teeth). so yeah i made the mistake of just checking ring gear thickness to see if the "new" third member i put in about 18months ago was the same... nope its not. i first noticed this issue last year around this time, but thought i just had a bad CV axle. i dont drive my in 4wd on the street so it was never apparent to me that i had this issue, i spend most of my 4wd time off road in slick conditions ie mud, sand, or snow, or going over rocks ect, places id expect to have some wheel slippage and picking up of tires, and slow speeds so the "binding" was never a real issue for me. but getting out on roads that some had ice and snow and some were just wet i noticed something seriously wrong... i had some bucking and pitching pretty bad between 25-45mph and above 45-50 i was just in a constant slide/drift, like you would experience on solid glazed ice... it took me a few min to figure out ****** when i was in 4wd and i have mustangs on summer tires doing better than me. well long story short here, it cut my trip to grants pass on friday really short, i made it to just south of salem and said F that... turned around and stayed home.
yesterday i bought a 4:10 rear 3rd out of another 3rd gen 4runner and will be installing it today.
in other news i have figured out the long hard starting with my 4runner. bad main power wire to the starter. in this cold weather its just become a big issue. its completely dead. the battery is brand new, like 2months old, the starter is brand new -i just completely rebuild it and cleaned it(fully dismantlement it and tore it down, cleaned it all out and reassembled it) so my two options are a starter relay and or the starter power wire. so gonna try and tackle that today as well... bad thing is my garage is full and there is snow on the ground.... and a high of 30 today... oh so fun
