Yep yep, I've actually got a pair that I bought years ago along with some other weld on items

If you can find a set of used manual hub spindles from a 1st Gen Tacoma, you can do the job yourself like @JZiggy and I did on his rig and mine. You can also weld on your own spindle gussets.

Timmmahhh!

Oh yeah, I've actually been watching these here recently to get an idea of what I was involved. I haven't fully decided on the manual hubs yet...

Manual hubs are nice in a few ways:
1) If your front suspension is set pretty high and you're chewing through CV boots - only turning them while you are actually wheeling makes them last far, far longer
2) If you break a CV shaft out on the trail and want to limp it home, freewheel the front hubs, and 2WD, and nothing is moving up there.

Folks say that swapping to manual hubs doesn't affect gas mileage but I personally can feel the change in drag with the hubs locked, mainly at highway speeds. (Might just be a 3RZ problem though!)

I'd believe it. It's turning less machinery than the ADD. ADD still turns both CV shafts and the front diff spider gears.

Small difference, but a real one.

100% agree.
I did a hub swap on my '94 (way less involved) and there was
an immediate improvement in every aspect. I loved having the options,
and could simply leave them locked in mixed weather conditions.
I despise how placated the consumer has become due to technological convenience...

Do I have to swap the cv axles to use the manual hubs?

iirc, the manual hub CV has a thinner shaft compared to ADD CV. Sonoran Steel used to have a guide on the needed parts to complete the swap to manual hubs

Yes they are different

Yes, as mentioned above, the CV shaft outer ends are different. And slightly harder to find, since the number of base 4WD Tacomas that used them weren't made in huge numbers.

Another small PITA aspect is that the base Tacomas the manual hubs came on did not have ABS, so almost always (there may be super race exceptions?) if you get donor junkyard manual knuckles, they're not going to be drilled to accept ABS sensors, and there will not be a tone ring. So this will disable ABS if you just bolt them on, and at least on my wife's 96, the speedometer/odometer gets it's vehicle speed data from the ABS, so if that goes off line, no speedo/odo. She initially put a Taco speed sensor in the transmission and wired that up.

The alternative (that she did eventually, and I did as part of the initial install) is to take both your original knuckles and the donor manual knuckles apart and reassemble the manual hubs, with a tone ring in place of one of the washers, into the ABS knuckles. Then everything works properly. And replace the bearings while doing that.

As a completely separate step on mine (part of installing a front locker) I also got the non-ADD passenger front diff leg on mine. Thus removing one potential 4WD failure mode while out on the trail. No more vacuum solenoids, lines, and actuator on the diff.

Wack

Double wack... I think given the circumstances that I'm going through right now I'm just going to stick with the regular hubs and then maybe do the manual hubs in the future once I have an actual garage... Haha

If you're going to buy a Yota1 assembled knuckle, and they'll sell them in an ABS version (knuckle, and a tone ring installed) then you'd be WAY better off going ahead and getting that now instead of taking apart nearly new ADD parts a little while later.

FWIW the ABS tone ring is easy to install at any point, it's not pressed on, just behind a big nut that holds the manual hub on from the back side.


My wife managed to find me fresh Toyota rebuilt manual CV shafts for a little over $100 a piece. Not sure why they were so cheap. And (I explicitly asked) they were OK with getting ADD CV shaft cores in return.

Hmm, well that is good to know as I'm pretty sure that I'm going to need to do something soon for these bearings.

Thanks for the info bud!