Depends on your commute and how much armor u have and if you tow. I think 4.56 is fine for 33 and 34s.

I run 4.88 on a 34 and it’s fine. I also ran 4.88 with 33 and it was fun as hell on the surface streets but u do run out of gear on the freeway, as in past 70 mph was um…..not ideal.

I'll DM you on IG.

We are going to do a whole weekend over there linking up with Deer Valley trail after we finish Slickrock

We had a few back and forth discussions. The Cliff's notes are as follows - I only asked about doing 4:10 for the rear. There are OEM front 410 differentials from some years of Tacoma. So what we really need to make this happen is just the 8.2. what I initially asked about is whether you could use the 4.56 ring gear blank because that would be a thick forged blank and cut that to be the 410 ring gear along with whether the pinion from the 3.73 could also be cut down and those could be combined to work. And they said that they took a look at it and they did have a combination of blanks so they wouldn't have to make new tooling for that.

It has been a few years so I assume costs have gone up since then. However, with an order of 200 sets the cost would be around $100 per matched ring and pinion set for a rear 8.2 in 4.10 ratio. The cost is really reasonable. It was just the minimum order quantity that I didn't want to deal with. A group buy of 10 is easy. Managing 200 was more of a pain with tracking and packaging them and shipping etc. Plus then how do I handle warranty if some of them are bad or someone breaks one in 3 years - is want to make sure there's at least a minimum supply of replacement parts available for 10 years. Pretty soon it's a big undertaking to do in a responsible way. That's why I don't follow up. The $20k for the order was something I would have maybe covered up front, but I don't want to deal with the rest of it.

If they would make me a sample set for $500, id have ordered them.


If I had jumped up to 35 or 37s, id really want 4.56 or lower. On my FJ I run 5.29s. I'm all for lower gears. I think it just wasn't quite right for my daily driver that sees a ton of highway miles to have 4.56. and in my case I was often empty with no extra weight and no racks or other stuff to increase drag. And I usually had the street tire set on so the 34s weren't on for most of my highway miles. So my use might be different. Ultimately I sold the 4R and bought a Tundra for my current needs.

I do still have the 4.56 diffs in storage setup for a future build of maybe a GX that will be not a daily driver but more of a all around family camp vehicle.

What I struggle most with is if I'm going past the moderate build it starts to make sense to find a land cruiser for the bigger running gear and engine. That's why I think 35s seem to be kinda the limit of what makes sense before looking at other platforms. It's a discontinuity because of tire fitment issues. Going to 35s and beyond jumps from a really good reasonably priced adventure mobile to spending a ton of $ that might be better spent on another platform - even just older Toyota options.

I ran a few trails a couple of weekends ago with a guy running 40's on his 4Runner. I'm on 33's and we ran the same trails, albeit, he could take whatever line he wanted and get away with it, while I had to pick lines very carefully. Talking with him, he says they are overkill for 99% of what we do, but he did it because he could and it's fun. If i remember correctly, he's running 5.26 gearing.

Up until I met him I was convinced I needed 35's, 4.56 gears, a front locker and a lot of little mods to run some of the trails he wants to do. I realize now that with some solid armor, and the setup I have, I'll be fine on 80% of the stuff i was worried about. Long term goal is still 35's and gears, but I've been incredibly impressed at how well my 4Runner has done with it's current setup.

35s are amazing but certainly aren't required to do adequate offroading. My 34" MTS were amazing off road, and required WAY less modifications than my current 315/70s.

Part of the reason for the upgrade was the look for me. Cant beat a 4Runner on some beefy 315s...

I think it was worth all of the trouble....I think.



I still rub a little when I jump higher than a foot and certain situations off road

I think 34's are plenty for a 4runner. but...prefer 35's or even 37's for offroading in general.