Fellas , I would like to get your advise ! I recently purchaced a 85' t4r . It is high milage but mechanically sound with a mildly rough interior and soso body . It came with new 31" AT tires on steel spokes(a little tall geared for these tires). I want to use it for a weekend hunting, camping, trail rig ( not a rock crawler). I live in a realy rural area and high speed driving is not necessary.
1. what is the stock gear ratio?
2. what would be a lower ratio but still allow it to travel at 50-55 mph comfortably?.
3. Do the toy rear ends hold up under moderate use with lockers with my setup? (somthing to keep me from getting out to lock hubs) thanks pc401

Go down to the axles section on this link below. My 1984 had 4.10's.

Toyota Pickup and 4Runner Drivetrain Specifications

on here Toyota Timeline It says manual tranny had 4.10's and automatics had 4:30's. Maybe yours still has some sort of sticker on the door somewhere...?

I am in the process of putting in 4.88's. Someone I know has 5.71 turning 40" tires with a 4Cyl. It is locked...sort of. It is welded locked, been that way for about 4 years, with no issues, and he's not that nice with his truck and his offroad preference is deep deep mud.

Just an thought... any easy way of doing it is finding 2x 86 to 95 with 4.56 or 4.88 with the axle diff still in tact and pulling them off already setup to be simply be swapped in. That is where my 4.88's came from. Scrap truck with good diffs.

Also keep in mind, that once you go 4Low you will have ample torque to turn bigger tires, especially for forest roads, hunting roads, and not super hardcore rock crawling, or the worst one, deep deep mud needs to most power to make the mud fly off the tires.

For lockers, the 8" axles and diffs inside, are esentially the same as the more modern 4runners, tacoma's and even the FJ cruisers. All of which have a model with an elocker and owners also upgrade to ARB lockers without much issue.

Use this link to figure out what your gear ratio is: Gearratiosanddiffs
My '95 is pretty comfortable at 50-55 with 4.30 gears and 31" tires, though it sometimes feels like it's geared too low at low speeds (I can barely make it to 5 mph in 1st gear without revving the engine higher than I like). You could probably go to 4.88 too.
Locking hubs aren't the same as lockers. Locking hubs lock your front wheels in place to allow the front axles to turn them when you engage 4WD. Your rear wheels will always be locked like this since you have rear wheel drive. Lockers lock the differential. With an open differential, the wheels are allowed to turn at different speeds, so if one wheel has less traction, the differential automatically routes more power to it. This is great until that wheel has no traction whatsoever - then all the power is going to that wheel and none goes to the wheel with traction. The locker forces the two wheels to turn at the same speed.

And yes, the Toyota rear ends hold up just fine with locking differentials.

To answer your question about getting out to lock hubs, I'm pretty sure no one makes auto-locking hubs for the '85. They were common from '86 on, but I don't think they had them on the '85. In fact, many people convert to manual hubs because it saves wear and tear on the front drive components.

That is a great site. It just made it to my browser favorites. Thanks.

1. 5 spd /manual trans combo came with 4.10 gears
2. next lower gears would be 4.30, but 4.56 would be better for 31's
3. Locked Toy rears hold up well under heavy use.

I appreciate the info fellas , the locker I am considering is the aussie (on a budget) , for those times I get catywampus crossing a ditch on and angle and to save me from locking the hubs for the one event only to unlock them afterwords.
I am hoping to get tractor like low gears for crawling through tight trees with out riding the clutch. I will trailer the rig anytime I will be going 75 miles or so , or a spell of interstate travel is required (25 miles to the nearest 4-lane). Thanks

If you want "tractor" gears, Look into 4.7 gears for the transfer case and/or a doubler.

Hmm, TELL ME MORE , I know the lowrange is not low enough, I am all ears
cost , special mods required , road worthy, reliability

As I said above, these are two different things you're talking about. The Aussie locker is a differential lock while the manual hub locks just lock the wheels in place. With the hub locks unlocked, your front wheels (the back wheels shouldn't have them) will spin freely without turning anything in the axle. If you engage 4wd with the hubs unlocked, you still have 2wd because the wheels are essentially detached from the axle. A differential lock won't have any effect on this. The differential lock simply forces both wheels to turn that the same speed.

What you're looking for are auto locking hubs (hubs that lock automatically whenever you engage 4wd), which I'm 99% sure they never made for the '85.

If you have some mechanical ability you can modify your t-case to install a 4.7:1 gear set in place of the stock 2.28:1 gearing.

If you have a bit more mechanical ability you can mount a second t-case to your stock case.

Check out Marlin Crawler, All Pro Offroad, and Advance Adapters websites for the parts and info on both.

The 4.7 gear change requires no other changes to your drive train.
Dual cases requires front and rear drive shaft modification, as well as a new cross-member to mount them.

If you're into really serious rock crawling, you can do both and have an insanely low crawl ratio.

I think his idea is that while he is in 2wd mode, having a diff locker in the rear would be more beneficial and work just as good as if he may have been in 4wd mode and open diff. Take a situation where maybe he has a front and rear up in the air, 4wd might not be enough and he would still just spin, but simply adding a rear locker would get him through it if atleast one rear tire has enough traction throughout the obstacle, and if that is the case then maybe even in just 2wd mode.

Why wouldn't you just lock the front hubs as soon as you hit the trail? You are not in 4WD mode until you engage the 4WD, so you are not stressing anything like if you were driving in 4WD mode with the hubs locked on curvy roads and highways. Then you wouldn't have get out and lock the hubs, because they would already be locked. And you could shift in and out of 4WD as needed to cross obstacles or make tight turns if you feel the 4WD is hampering it some.

The low gears I think are adequate. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't want lower and a double transfercase. Partly for the cool show-off factor though....

With you 1985, if it isn't changed, should have a gear driven transfercase. (unless their are some exceptions to this rule?) You would only be lowering the LOW gearing, the regular drive gearing would remain the same. Thus not affecting you road worthy drivability. You wouldn't be using the LOW on regular street driving.

You can get even more tractorish, by adding a second transfercase or doubler. This again would NOT affect drivability since it is only working when you would engage it. So now you would be able to apply reduction twice since one transfercase in LOW feeds another transfercase in low and it gets reduced again. But with them all in LOW, it is slow. Check out youtube for Marlin Crawler. It goes so slow, and there is some much torque that guys get out of the truck and walk beside it, and it just keeps going and does not stall even if no one is inside pressing the gas. That is the cool factor I am talking about.

Fixed it for ya.

I know you have a 22re but this explains it really well from a guy who KNOWS HIS STUFF. Happy reading.

http://www.yotatech.com/f116/v6-tran...r-case-231669/

Haha, yeah, you're probably right...didn't even think about that. I got hung up on the apparent comparison of locking hubs and locking differential.

eeech, sorry. Yeah I mean't to say "You wouldn't be using the LOW on regular street driving."