1999 SAS Dana44 ARB 4Runner Build

[Gadgetguy]

Very thorough, thank you!

 

[kolelt]

Again this is awesome build. And great write up man.

So you ended up using the stock rear axle ? For the rear ?

All said and done.... how much did this cost you. Straight up

 

[MandAtaco]

Hey man, great build! I've got a couple questions about the crawler install.

How long was your crawler assembly? I'm getting ready to stab my Marlin Crawler set up in mine and its 8.5" from front adapter to rear. Which leads into my next question, did you have to do any crazy turning or anything to slide the rear case onto the crawler box? I had planned to cut out the drivers side rear cross member mount and rebuild it removable. Looking at your 99 though I may be OK. Mine is a 00 and I believe the 99-00 were the same length transmission. If your crawler assembly is the same length as the Marlin set up, you may have just saved me some headache! Thanks!

 

[Mountain Fun]

Do you need to have the bolts coming down from the top? seems like if you reversed them to would eliminate some rock anchors...
bend one of those bolts and it will need to be ground off.

I could definitely flip the bolts. To be honest, I didn't even really think about it at the time, I was just rushing to get it back together. I will probably flip them on your suggestion.

 

[Mountain Fun]

Again this is awesome build. And great write up man.

So you ended up using the stock rear axle ? For the rear ?

All said and done.... how much did this cost you. Straight up

c

I did use the factory axle for a few reason. I read that the speedometer on the 3rd gen 4runners is tied into the rear abs sensors, I'm sure there is a workaround for this but I didn't really feel like messing with it. I also already had the 4:88 gears in my rear axle which matched the dana44 I found on craigslist. The Toyota rear is pretty strong, I just need to watch the tires spin and bouncing.

I'm not really sure how much the total cost is. If I include the tires, sas kit, arb diffs, compressor, driveshafts, and the dual cases, I would probably say about $12,000 in mods. I also did most of the work myself (with help from friends) which saved probably about $4000 in labor cost.

 

[Mountain Fun]

Hey man, great build! I've got a couple questions about the crawler install.

How long was your crawler assembly? I'm getting ready to stab my Marlin Crawler set up in mine and its 8.5" from front adapter to rear. Which leads into my next question, did you have to do any crazy turning or anything to slide the rear case onto the crawler box? I had planned to cut out the drivers side rear cross member mount and rebuild it removable. Looking at your 99 though I may be OK. Mine is a 00 and I believe the 99-00 were the same length transmission. If your crawler assembly is the same length as the Marlin set up, you may have just saved me some headache! Thanks!

The trail gear setup measured 8.5" also. It all went in pretty easily. I didn't have to cut or grind anything to make it fit. I did install the crawl box, and then my transfer case instead of doing both at the same time. I took out the center portion of the rear cross member to stab it in. I did have to remove one of the bolt so I could rotate it down and up. Once the transfer case is in place there is no way to slide the bolts in on the drivers side. It's a tight fit but it definitely fit in there.

On a side note, don't forget to put silicone on your drain plugs. I didn't and they are dripping a little. I'm going to try to back the bottom out a little and seal it up. If that doesn't work I have to pull the whole crossmember and drain the cases and reseal the plug. 3.5 quarts of gear lube wasted.

 

[Mountain Fun]

One other small issue I ran into after doing the swap was my rear driveline angle was pretty off. I measured it to be 11 degrees off so I was getting a lot of chatter out the rear driveshaft when accelerating. This is a picture of the before:

I initially was just going to install a shim on the leaf but after measuring the ship would be 1.25" thick on one side and would raise the backend of the truck another .75", I didn't want that. I decided to just order another set of axle perches and cut off the old ones and weld on new ones at the right angle.

Here is a picture after it was fixed. It accelerates super sooth now.

 

[MandAtaco]

The trail gear setup measured 8.5" also. It all went in pretty easily. I didn't have to cut or grind anything to make it fit. I did install the crawl box, and then my transfer case instead of doing both at the same time. I took out the center portion of the rear cross member to stab it in. I did have to remove one of the bolt so I could rotate it down and up. Once the transfer case is in place there is no way to slide the bolts in on the drivers side. It's a tight fit but it definitely fit in there.

On a side note, don't forget to put silicone on your drain plugs. I didn't and they are dripping a little. I'm going to try to back the bottom out a little and seal it up. If that doesn't work I have to pull the whole crossmember and drain the cases and reseal the plug. 3.5 quarts of gear lube wasted.

Awesome man! You may have just saved me some work! LOL

Truck is amazing, absolutely awesome build!

 

[kolelt]

c

I did use the factory axle for a few reason. I read that the speedometer on the 3rd gen 4runners is tied into the rear abs sensors, I'm sure there is a workaround for this but I didn't really feel like messing with it. I also already had the 4:88 gears in my rear axle which matched the dana44 I found on craigslist. The Toyota rear is pretty strong, I just need to watch the tires spin and bouncing.

I'm not really sure how much the total cost is. If I include the tires, sas kit, arb diffs, compressor, driveshafts, and the dual cases, I would probably say about $12,000 in mods. I also did most of the work myself (with help from friends) which saved probably about $4000 in labor cost.

I don't think the rear abs has anything to do with the odometer. Because I completely cut of the ABS wires and my speedometer still works.

 

[Mountain Fun]

I don't think the rear abs has anything to do with the odometer. Because I completely cut of the ABS wires and my speedometer still works.

I'm going to unplug them and see if the speedo still works. If it does I'm going to cut mine off too. Less clutter on the rear axle. I will post what I find so other people know if they can eliminate them or not. Thanks for posting.

 

[phattyduck]

I'm going to unplug them and see if the speedo still works. If it does I'm going to cut mine off too. Less clutter on the rear axle. I will post what I find so other people know if they can eliminate them or not. Thanks for posting.

There is a way to fix that if you lose the speedo with the rear ABS sensors removed... You can put a speed sensor on the back of the trans (errrr, transfer case?) and use that signal to run the speedometer and ECU. Its how the early non-ABS 4Runners were done. I believe a couple guys on here have already done it. You will probably need a speedo healer to correct for tire size and gearing.

-Charlie

 

[snow junky]

Few people realize the pia it is to sas a 3rd gen especially the French hanger. I have had to redo over and over a lot of steering, springs and shocks just to get it all to move together without binding up.

Im going to be installing trail gear duel case setup soon. My main concern is I have the TRail gear single case crossmemer welded up and am not sure if their duel case will bolt up in the correct spot or not. Is that what you did?

Also you now have me worried about rear pinion angle. It's perfect now on 63s. but with the tcase moving back will that significantly effect the angle?

Looks like your having fun with your pitman arm too. I have sky's flat pitman arm and it's TIGHT

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Mountain Fun]

Few people realize the pia it is to sas a 3rd gen especially the French hanger. I have had to redo over and over a lot of steering, springs and shocks just to get it all to move together without binding up.

Im going to be installing trail gear duel case setup soon. My main concern is I have the TRail gear single case crossmemer welded up and am not sure if their duel case will bolt up in the correct spot or not. Is that what you did?

Also you now have me worried about rear pinion angle. It's perfect now on 63s. but with the tcase moving back will that significantly effect the angle?

Looks like your having fun with your pitman arm too. I have sky's flat pitman arm and it's TIGHT

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I had the same issue. I had the Trail Gear single case crossmember welded to my frame but they said the dual case crossmember mounts the same so I took a chance. Mine lined up perfectly, same mounting for both the single case and dual case. The only thing that was kind of a pain in the ass was getting the crawl box mount holes to perfectly line up with the crossmember. Once I loosed the bolts the crawl box mount and played with a bit everything lined up. Trail Gear makes a really good setup. There was no cutting or grinding (other than the floorboard) to get it all installed.

And I totally agree about the frenched hangers, total pain in the ass and by far the scariest part of the whole install. Nothing like cutting two huge chunks out of your frame.

 

[Mountain Fun]

Again this is awesome build. And great write up man.

So you ended up using the stock rear axle ? For the rear ?

All said and done.... how much did this cost you. Straight up

I forgot to mention the other reason I decided to stay with the stock axle. The Toyota factory brake booster and master cylinder doesn't pump enough brake fluid to power a dana44 front and say a dana60 rear brakes. This would require switching to a T100 brake booster matched to a chevy master cylinder. During the build I didn't feel like dealing with this. At a later time I may switch it out, but not at this time. My goal in the future is to install a 1 ton rear axle and switch to 5:38 gears which would require upgrading the brake system.

 

[n0tserp]

Sick build!!! I just got done doing a sas conversion on my 3rd gen... I opted for a rock assault axel n leafs all around also :thumb:

 

[n0tserp]

Does your rig lean towards the driver side? Messaged a few people with sas conversions and majority of them said its because of the weight

 

[Mountain Fun]

Does your rig lean towards the driver side? Messaged a few people with sas conversions and majority of them said its because of the weight

Mine doesn't lean at all but I also ordered heavy duty springs from Sky Manufacturing to compensate for the extra body weight of the 4Runner.. They told me that the Tacoma springs will sag like two inches on the 4runner.

 

[Mountain Fun]

Well I finally got sick and tired of the squishy brakes. Plus I had a car pull out right in front of me and stomped the brake pedal to the floor and the truck barely rolled to a stop almost smashing in to the car in front of me. I decided it was time to fix this problem.

I did a lot of research and decided to start with a Chevy 1 ton master cylinder to see how pedal feel and stopping was. Chevy master are around $20 so I figured I can easily swap out to a 1/2 ton master if the pedal is too firm.

EricB on pireate4x4 has an awesome page he wrote devoted to this brake swap. This is the link:
Brake Upgrade

I drove down to Upullandpay and picked up a dual diaphragm booster as well the front brake line setup out of a T100 2wd pickup for about $35. My 4runner had a dual diaphragm booster but it was the two bolt master kind, I need a 4 bolt booster.

 

[Mountain Fun]

The first thing I did was gut the ABS unit and all the extra brake line for the front and rear.

Then I yanked out the factory booster and master cylinder.

Once I had the original booster out I measured the connection to the pedal to make sure I set the T100 booster up to the same length.

 

[Mountain Fun]

I purchased the master cylinder adapter from Sky Manufacturing and the Master from Autozone.

I also rented a couple of tools from Autozone. Great deal, you just pay for the tool and when you are done using it you return it for a full refund. I love their rental program.