Just how strong is the 7.5"?

[JamesDean91]

Recent conversations with Tech Tim(writer in 4x4toyotamag) he has been rocking the ifs on his first Gen runner for a little while with 35s. He is trying to persuade me into keeping my ifs instead of going to a live axle, some of his points he brought up made me actually think of the pros and cons of both systems. And ifs wins on every aspect except for the r&p, he says having the arb in the front of his rig has held up to everything he has thrown at it, besides his cv's that are now rcv's and his idler arm bushings.

So I am coming to the 3rd Gen community to ask people who are running 35+" tires if you have ever had any serious damage with the added weight of our runners. The type of wheeling I do myself is pretty much everything. I am not really a led foot wheeler but have been known to hammer down now and again.

 

[rickashay]

Recent conversations with Tech Tim(writer in 4x4toyotamag) he has been rocking the ifs on his first Gen runner for a little while with 35s. He is trying to persuade me into keeping my ifs instead of going to a live axle, some of his points he brought up made me actually think of the pros and cons of both systems. And ifs wins on every aspect except for the r&p, he says having the arb in the front of his rig has held up to everything he has thrown at it, besides his cv's that are now rcv's and his idler arm bushings.

So I am coming to the 3rd Gen community to ask people who are running 35+" tires if you have ever had any serious damage with the added weight of our runners. The type of wheeling I do myself is pretty much everything. I am not really a led foot wheeler but have been known to hammer down now and again.

I'm sure some of the dudes on 35's will chime in soon. I just have one point to mention: The 1st gen 4Runners/Trucks run the IFS Steering box that is used on most/all solid axle conversions. The factory steering system in a 3rd gen 4Runner is the Rack and Pinion and is not as robust. I only run 33's but I've destroyed my factory rack in ~2 years worth of wheeling, got a rebuilt one, and may be replacing it again a year later. I can only imagine it would be even worse with the bigger tires.

 

[FrankM23]

i know some guys running 35's use a steering cooler to take care of that rack. with 35's it's at really high temps. when you add the derale steering cooler they go back to the stock temp wtih 265's. 3rd gen ifs works with constraints. try to avoid binding and and just watch those cv angles.

 

[JamesDean91]

Yes I do know ours is a rack and pinion design. Something else I forgot to mention about his 1st Gen is that he's also running a blazland long travel and I don't plan on running long travel.

 

[Coastal616]

I've broken several toyota 8" front diffs wheeling, so I have little faith in the 7.5".....see my new thread.

 

[Swede]

I've run 35's for about 5 years now and haven't had any issues with the 7.5. Last year I put in a set of yukon 4.88's and the old gears and bearings looked great. However, I am very careful when applying torque while wheeling due to the numerous stories of busted spider gears and CV's but so far so good.