gannonrt
New member
This write up is mostly done. I'll come back and edit with torque values, part numbers and a few more details but this is a good overview.
First off, Acknowledgements:
Catalina34 and Zuk were nice enough to give me their cell numbers and talk to me several times about this . Catalina was the main person that gave me the confidence to order the Aussie and Zuk took a few calls through the installation process when I wanted to confirm what I was seeing.
Step 1
Read these two links to get familiar with the install process. Read the Aussie Locker installation instructions too. I used them to guide me through the installation, but both are for the differential that would be in a 2nd generation 4Runner, not a 3rd generation. The overall process is the same but the guts of the third member are slightly different. I would read through both of these multiple times prior to doing the installation. Additionally, read through the Aussie Locker install manual a few times too.
http://www.gearinstalls.com/aussielocker.htm
http://www.yotatech.com/f129/third-member-removal-aussie-install-163698/
Note on the Aussie Locker instructions:
In an earlier post I said that the Aussie Locker instructions were incorrect. That is not true, they are correct, I was wrong. (I didn't realize that the links above are for 2nd Generation 4Runner Diffs.) Unfortunately, the instructions are not very good and are just "preliminary" for 3rd gen differentials. The pictures are crappy, black and white, and low resolution. They also have 3rd gen specific instructions and generic instructions all folded together. Make sure you keep it all in order. I'd recommend stapling them together so they don't get mixed up. That happened to me and I lost my bearings for a few minutes.
Step 2)
Open the Aussie Locker box you received from Torq-Masters. Check the contents. You should find some instructions, 4 pins, 4 springs and the six parts shown below circled in red.
Step 3)
Use some wheel chocks on the front wheels since you can't use the emergency break. Loosen the lugnuts on the rear wheels. Jack up the rear end and put the jack stands under the rear axle. Don't put the emergency brake on because you'll be disconnecting it and may need the slack.
Step 4)
Disconnect the emergency break. This is done by removing a cotter pin that holds the cable to the emergency brake assembly on the back of the hub. There is a U-shaped shim that fits inside the female piece at the end of the cable. I'm not sure why it's important, but I'm sure some Toyota engineer thought it was important so don't lose it. You can see where the pin is and picture after that show the cotter pin fastener. Disconnect the emergency brake cable on both sides.
Step 5)
Take the four nuts off the back of the axle flange. Three of them are shown here. The bolts are attached to the hub and extend through holes in the axle flange. Do this on both sides. Don't pull the hub out yet, you still need to disconnect the brake line.
Step 6)
Disconnect the brake lines with a flare wrench. Do not use an adjustable wrench since it can round off the small nut used. The nut you are looking for is shown in red here. Have a piece of 1/4" brake bleed tubing ready to slip over the disconnected brake line. I use a tie wrap to pinch the 1/4" brake bleed tubing as close as possible to the brake line.
Step 6)
Drain the rear diff. Remember to break loose the fill plug first, not the drain plug. Once you are completely sure that you can take out the fill plug then remove the drain plug. You don't want to have the drain plug out and the diff drained and then realize that you can’t refill it. The fill is the upper plug and the drain is the lower plug. Don't let the diff fluid soak into the concrete or you'll be smelling it in your garage for a long time and it smells a little foul to me.
Step 7)
Now you can remove the hub and attached axle from each side. Be sure to pull the axle directly out without letting it rest on the axle seal at all. It is an awkward motion since the axle and hub weigh about 45 lbs. Do this on both sides. I found it to be easiest to pull the hub slightly out with two hands until there was enough axle showing to grab the axle shaft itself with your other hand. Make sure to keep the shaft clean from debris since you'll be putting it back eventually. In the picture below you can see the axle seal (light colored metal ring in the axle with red arrow pointing to it) and the 1/4" brake bleeder tubing hanging down.
Step 8)
Disconnect the drive shaft bolts. You'll need to wrenches of the same size, one on each side. You see two of the bolts highlighted in the red square here. There are nuts on the other side of the drive shaft flange. I kept the transmission in neutral so I could rotate the drive shaft to allow better access to the bolts. Once you remove the four bolt/nuts then you'll need to secure the drive shaft up and out of the way to remove the third member.
Step 9)
Remove the 10 bolts (red arrow) that hold the third member to the axle housing. These bolts are actually studs that have been screwed into the axle housing so you might actually unscrew the stud itself if the bolt is frozen on. If you see the second picture the rectangles show the studs the stayed in the axle housing and a bolt hole where one did not. I would soak all of them with PB Blaster or something similar prior to working on them. Once all of them are off you're third member will likely hang there. I had to push mine back and forth to create enough space between the axle housing and third member to slip a large flat head screw driver in between to force them more open. I would recommend a large width chisel or putty instead of my method to avoid damaging the mating surfaces. Additionally, you'll need to take a razor blade and some steel wool to scrape off gasket material from both surfaces. You can see some of the gasket material in the second picture below. The replacement gasket part number that I used is XXX and it was $4.
The third member on my rig weighed 58.8 lbs so you may need a hand to pull it off or if you want you could pull it off yourself onto your chest and slide out. I'd recommend getting an extra hand. Try to pull it directly out so as to not to let the ring gear contact the edge of the axle housing and potentially damage a tooth.
Step 10)
Now you have the third member off the vehicle and sitting on a bench or on the ground. I used a ton of starter fluid to clean off the interior of the third member and all the associated gears. The recommendation to use this came from Zuk. It does work great since it evaporates quickly and has less warnings than brake cleaner. I set the whole thing in a plastic tub with paper towels underneath to catch all the liquids that came out. You don't have to clean it perfectly.
Step 11)
Now we are getting to one of the most important parts. Marking everything so that you can put everything back together exactly the way you found it. I would suggest using the naming conventions in the picture below and putting the removed parts in labeled ziplock bags and taking a bunch of pictures. This was especially useful since I made a few dumb decisions when I was taking things apart and the pictures saved the day.
Step 12)
First thing that needs to happen is to remove the Carrier Bearing Adjuster Lock Bolt and Lock Tab. Remove these from each side and put into a ziplock bag labeled Pinion Side or Ring Side.
Step 13)
Now it's time to mark the positions of the Carrier Bearing Adjuster so that you can install it to the exact same position. I tried to use a Sharpie marker but had trouble keeping the marker from smudging off. Here's a picture of the way Zuk marked it. He used a Sharpie and two dents punched in with a drift. One of the dots is on the Carrier Bearing Adjuster Cap right a slight horizontal line that you can barely see. The other one is below the line. The line itself is where the Carrier Bearing Adjuster Cap ends. The metal below the line is part of the third member housing. Instead of a marker I would use the drift to put two dents into the Carrier Bearing Adjuster itself right where the line is. This needs to be done on both Carrier Bearing Adjusters and you need to keep straight which one goes on the ring side and which goes on the pinion side. I would recommend using the labeled ziplock bags to keep them straight.
First off, Acknowledgements:
Catalina34 and Zuk were nice enough to give me their cell numbers and talk to me several times about this . Catalina was the main person that gave me the confidence to order the Aussie and Zuk took a few calls through the installation process when I wanted to confirm what I was seeing.
Step 1
Read these two links to get familiar with the install process. Read the Aussie Locker installation instructions too. I used them to guide me through the installation, but both are for the differential that would be in a 2nd generation 4Runner, not a 3rd generation. The overall process is the same but the guts of the third member are slightly different. I would read through both of these multiple times prior to doing the installation. Additionally, read through the Aussie Locker install manual a few times too.
http://www.gearinstalls.com/aussielocker.htm
http://www.yotatech.com/f129/third-member-removal-aussie-install-163698/
Note on the Aussie Locker instructions:
In an earlier post I said that the Aussie Locker instructions were incorrect. That is not true, they are correct, I was wrong. (I didn't realize that the links above are for 2nd Generation 4Runner Diffs.) Unfortunately, the instructions are not very good and are just "preliminary" for 3rd gen differentials. The pictures are crappy, black and white, and low resolution. They also have 3rd gen specific instructions and generic instructions all folded together. Make sure you keep it all in order. I'd recommend stapling them together so they don't get mixed up. That happened to me and I lost my bearings for a few minutes.
Step 2)
Open the Aussie Locker box you received from Torq-Masters. Check the contents. You should find some instructions, 4 pins, 4 springs and the six parts shown below circled in red.
Step 3)
Use some wheel chocks on the front wheels since you can't use the emergency break. Loosen the lugnuts on the rear wheels. Jack up the rear end and put the jack stands under the rear axle. Don't put the emergency brake on because you'll be disconnecting it and may need the slack.
Step 4)
Disconnect the emergency break. This is done by removing a cotter pin that holds the cable to the emergency brake assembly on the back of the hub. There is a U-shaped shim that fits inside the female piece at the end of the cable. I'm not sure why it's important, but I'm sure some Toyota engineer thought it was important so don't lose it. You can see where the pin is and picture after that show the cotter pin fastener. Disconnect the emergency brake cable on both sides.
Step 5)
Take the four nuts off the back of the axle flange. Three of them are shown here. The bolts are attached to the hub and extend through holes in the axle flange. Do this on both sides. Don't pull the hub out yet, you still need to disconnect the brake line.
Step 6)
Disconnect the brake lines with a flare wrench. Do not use an adjustable wrench since it can round off the small nut used. The nut you are looking for is shown in red here. Have a piece of 1/4" brake bleed tubing ready to slip over the disconnected brake line. I use a tie wrap to pinch the 1/4" brake bleed tubing as close as possible to the brake line.
Step 6)
Drain the rear diff. Remember to break loose the fill plug first, not the drain plug. Once you are completely sure that you can take out the fill plug then remove the drain plug. You don't want to have the drain plug out and the diff drained and then realize that you can’t refill it. The fill is the upper plug and the drain is the lower plug. Don't let the diff fluid soak into the concrete or you'll be smelling it in your garage for a long time and it smells a little foul to me.
Step 7)
Now you can remove the hub and attached axle from each side. Be sure to pull the axle directly out without letting it rest on the axle seal at all. It is an awkward motion since the axle and hub weigh about 45 lbs. Do this on both sides. I found it to be easiest to pull the hub slightly out with two hands until there was enough axle showing to grab the axle shaft itself with your other hand. Make sure to keep the shaft clean from debris since you'll be putting it back eventually. In the picture below you can see the axle seal (light colored metal ring in the axle with red arrow pointing to it) and the 1/4" brake bleeder tubing hanging down.
Step 8)
Disconnect the drive shaft bolts. You'll need to wrenches of the same size, one on each side. You see two of the bolts highlighted in the red square here. There are nuts on the other side of the drive shaft flange. I kept the transmission in neutral so I could rotate the drive shaft to allow better access to the bolts. Once you remove the four bolt/nuts then you'll need to secure the drive shaft up and out of the way to remove the third member.
Step 9)
Remove the 10 bolts (red arrow) that hold the third member to the axle housing. These bolts are actually studs that have been screwed into the axle housing so you might actually unscrew the stud itself if the bolt is frozen on. If you see the second picture the rectangles show the studs the stayed in the axle housing and a bolt hole where one did not. I would soak all of them with PB Blaster or something similar prior to working on them. Once all of them are off you're third member will likely hang there. I had to push mine back and forth to create enough space between the axle housing and third member to slip a large flat head screw driver in between to force them more open. I would recommend a large width chisel or putty instead of my method to avoid damaging the mating surfaces. Additionally, you'll need to take a razor blade and some steel wool to scrape off gasket material from both surfaces. You can see some of the gasket material in the second picture below. The replacement gasket part number that I used is XXX and it was $4.
The third member on my rig weighed 58.8 lbs so you may need a hand to pull it off or if you want you could pull it off yourself onto your chest and slide out. I'd recommend getting an extra hand. Try to pull it directly out so as to not to let the ring gear contact the edge of the axle housing and potentially damage a tooth.
Step 10)
Now you have the third member off the vehicle and sitting on a bench or on the ground. I used a ton of starter fluid to clean off the interior of the third member and all the associated gears. The recommendation to use this came from Zuk. It does work great since it evaporates quickly and has less warnings than brake cleaner. I set the whole thing in a plastic tub with paper towels underneath to catch all the liquids that came out. You don't have to clean it perfectly.
Step 11)
Now we are getting to one of the most important parts. Marking everything so that you can put everything back together exactly the way you found it. I would suggest using the naming conventions in the picture below and putting the removed parts in labeled ziplock bags and taking a bunch of pictures. This was especially useful since I made a few dumb decisions when I was taking things apart and the pictures saved the day.
Step 12)
First thing that needs to happen is to remove the Carrier Bearing Adjuster Lock Bolt and Lock Tab. Remove these from each side and put into a ziplock bag labeled Pinion Side or Ring Side.
Step 13)
Now it's time to mark the positions of the Carrier Bearing Adjuster so that you can install it to the exact same position. I tried to use a Sharpie marker but had trouble keeping the marker from smudging off. Here's a picture of the way Zuk marked it. He used a Sharpie and two dents punched in with a drift. One of the dots is on the Carrier Bearing Adjuster Cap right a slight horizontal line that you can barely see. The other one is below the line. The line itself is where the Carrier Bearing Adjuster Cap ends. The metal below the line is part of the third member housing. Instead of a marker I would use the drift to put two dents into the Carrier Bearing Adjuster itself right where the line is. This needs to be done on both Carrier Bearing Adjusters and you need to keep straight which one goes on the ring side and which goes on the pinion side. I would recommend using the labeled ziplock bags to keep them straight.
Last edited:
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