whiteyota93

Figured its better late then never,

I've had my 93 pickup for about 3 years now, got it bone stock and in great shape! A family friend bought it and I was eyeing it up for months on end in his driveway. Finally went by and ask if he was selling it. Little did I know he was doing head gaskets and a ton of maintenance on it to freshen it up and get it back to its glory. It's a 93 dlx 5 speed extended cab, 4.56s and of course ifs. Little to no rust at the time and ran like a top.




So.. I got it now. 1st year, drove it stock and took it everywhere it would go. 2nd year, did leafs, torsion bars, bj spacers and a ton of front end work. Light, bumpers, along with a new set of 33x10.5x15 bfgs. Again it kept surprising me how well it performed basically stock. But... The ifs just wasn't cutting it anymore. Wanted more flex with a solid axle and I knew i would be happier in the long run, since here in bc there's really no use for a long travel prerunner, at least not for what I wanted it to do.

So it began, bought an axle and started ordering parts.. 85 yota housing, somewhat complete. I figured if I was going to do this I might as well add what I could afford to make it as strong as possible for now. So I ordered some trail gear knuckle ball gussets, knuckle studs, spindle bolts from Toyota, hub studs and the steering box relocation kit from trail gear. Along with the 3"hd ifs eliminator kit from trail gear. Let the fun begin,




SO everything arrived at a friends store and I went and picked it up right away. Immediately started to build the axle. Got trusses and gussets welded on and everything cleaned up at ready for assembly. Axles, I'm using stock ones for now, as they weren't in the budget, so we decided to do the tack welds to eliminate the need for that pesky c-clip. Was pretty simple to dial in, just took a few times to get it sitting on the seal properly. moved onto installing knuckles and packing everything with grease. I suggest, taking your time with the trunnion bearing prelaod. I decided to set them on the tighter side, because I had a buddy who said he set them bang on and the new bearings loosened off a bunch after driving for a bit. Once we were happy, we slapped some spindles on and get ready to transport everything back over to my place where we'd be doing the swap.
I decided to go with the ifs hub swap right off the bat, instead of using those horrid spacers. I had a buddy machine down the mounting face so the tacoma rotors would slide over nicely onto the hub. That was the easy part.. Use the solid axle inner seal for the hubs as the ifs ones are a smaller diameter. You can use either the ifs bearings or the solid axle bearings, they are the same size id and od. Mounted the hubs, set the bearing preload, and slapped on some aisin hubs. Now the fun part. I had to clearance the inside of the caliper slightly to make room for the rotor, and I had to clearance the face of the caliper to clear my wheels, not much but had to take on fin off the caliper basically. Oh yeah, and I drilled out the ears on the caliper and knuckle to 1/2" and used all grade 8 hardware and to bolt the brakes up.








Axle is done and the truck at this point was down to bar frame and preped for the fab work. Took me and a buddy about 3 hours tot strip the front end down, no cutting yet, just unbolted everything and now had a massive pill of ifs parts. Next day we started cutting and grinding. He brought it torch with him so we shaved everything down with that and just had to finish grinding the left over slag and some welds. Took a solid day of work to get it looking clean and tidy.




Time to move the steering box and start to drill holes for the shackle mounts, ended up moving the box forward 1 1/4" forward from the stock location. It was going to be a pain to move more so we decided that was going to have to do. Had to notch a bunch of stuff up front but it was worth it!




Time for some holes! Okay it wasnt exciting or fun in anyway... used a hole saw to get through the frame on both sides, then the torch to blast out the middle. Worked well but we had to adjust the holes to make them more square to the front. Tack Tack Tack, then we tacked the front hanger flush and said screw it lets see how it looks!





hmmm.. its a god dam monster truck!!! 3" kit? you say what now .. okay, I knew it was going to be huge at first, and it was. Shackle angle wasn't what we wanted and the wheels were pushed really far forward. Lift it back up and try again tomorrow.
Ended up moving the front hanger back by a 1/4" and pulled 2 of the smallest leaves out of the pack. The bottom one is tiny and the one above it not much bigger. I suspect that I will end up putting the bigger of the 2 back in but for now it stays out! Mocked up shock hooks while we were there and got as little painting done. Steering angles worked out perfect and Im super happy about the clearance for everything. High is a bit better and wheel placement and shackle angle are money!

So back to the ground it goes after some welding...



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Looking good and more like I could actually drive it again! Did some painting and final welding and assembly! Test drive and then off to work on Monday!! Oh yeah i forgot to mention.. this thing is my work truck.. well it was haha




Went and played around in 2wd since I'm lacking a driveshaft at the moment. The rear OME leaves don't flex enough with no weight in the back so they were having are a hard time keeping tires on the ground while the front didn't seem to care lol All seems well up front, I put 800km on it so far before taking the truck off the road again to do the back end. NO death wobble, no steering issues, and I'm really happy to say that I have very good steering wheel return while turning corners.
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Currently working on getting the rear finished up .. Little peek at the progress so far. .



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yngbuck19

Awesome build so far! Any info on your rear bumper? Is it Custom? Does it have a 2" receiver built into it? You did say it was a work truck right?

whiteyota93

Thanks! Yeah rear bumper is custom, a buddy and I made it out of box tube and capped the ends, drilled holes for a drain valve and air line in and out. Going to use it as a tank for my on board air. We opted to leave out a hitch receiver as the 3.0l can't tow much lol. I'll find a good pic of it!