T-Juan - `98 Toyota T100 4x4, 5-spd

[SaltyMethods]

It's been a hot minute since I've posted.

Back at the end of April we went out to Plaster City to take advantage of the relatively cool weather out in the desert. Snapped my lower ball joint and my buddy lost axle. I think I posted some pics in a different thread. But here are a couple of pics just to recap.



Once I got it home, I replaced the ball joint, tie rod, some bolts and fixed the CV boot and bent back a couple of other things.




I was able to pick up a set of Total Chaos lower uniball conversion kit off of Race-Dezert. Haven't put them in yet but will soon.


Once I got it back up and running, I was trying to drive it out to Vegas for a tradeshow. I needed to swap out the rear diff oil since I did 500-1,000 miles on the new diff. Once I drained the oil I got all kinds of silver specs, slivers and metal chunks. Damn... I thought the rear end was done, so I didn't drive it out and parked it on the side of the house. Once I got home I finally got the time to open up the rear diff and look inside. More chunks and glitter. I pulled out the 3rd member to see the damage. Nothing. No damage. Ring gear, pinion and wear marks all looked fine. The mini-locker looked good and the pinion turned smoothly. Scratched my head in confusion. After talking with a few people, I came to the realization that I didn't clean out the housing throughly from the first time I re-did the diff. I didn't pull out the baffles and I think all that shrapnel was floating behind them and in the axle tubes. Lesson learned.




I took out the two smallest leafs out of my Deaver H70HD to see if I could soften up the rear a bit and put it all back together. Stoked to get her back up and running.




Gave her a wash this morning and drove her to work.

 

[Austen2019]

Nice build I don’t know why there aren’t more of these built it’s such a perfect platform.
I would plate in the carrier bearing mounts they tend to rip off after some abuse

 

[SaltyMethods]

Nice build I don’t know why there aren’t more of these built it’s such a perfect platform.
I would plate in the carrier bearing mounts they tend to rip off after some abuse

How would you do that? Any visuals of plating it in?

 

[Austen2019]

How would you do that? Any visuals of plating it in?

Just box in one side of the u both sides mine ripped off I cut out entire frame cross member out and made a tube with 3/8 plate and 1/2 in grade 8 bolts.

 

[SaltyMethods]

Ran out to the desert for a day trip on Sunday. 98* at 8:30am. 109* at mid-day. I think we were the only idiots driving through the desert that day.

SD > Plaster City > Split Mtn. Road > Fish Creek Trail (had to turnaround because we got lost) > Carrizo Creek Trail > S2 highway > Stagecoach RV Park > SD. 11-hour day.







Going up Diablo's Drop


At the end of our off roading adventure we stopped at Stagecoach RV park. We were just taking a break after a long day of driving around. Every like 10 minutes we would see some new, interesting looking person or persons, come by. Like one chick was riding a bike down the highway with a bikini top, on a BMX bike, sunglasses and white headphones on. Then later some two crackheads (one black chick, and one white crackhead looking dude) stopped by to get some water from the water purification machine. As they left, her brakes were making the most god awful sound and as they took off a brake pad shot out from underneath their car. We were all looking at them in amazement. She stopped and asked if she needed that. We were, like, "It's your brake pad. But it's so worn out, it ain't doing you any good anyways." So she was like, "Oh. Ok." then took off. We were all laughing in amazement. Braking only slows you down. Ain't nobody gots time for dat!



Pretty dope hand carved wood map on the wall at Stagecoach RV Park. Has almost all the trails in the Anza Borrego desert area.