Axle swap. job

[JakeM]

D

 

[MarkW]

It's fairly straight forward, assuming the wheel bearings and seals in the new axle are ok its just a case of swapping over what you have and bolting it up to the new one.

What diff ratio is on the new axle?

 

[Trevor]

If the old axle is shot, be prepared for some of the small bolts to sheer, worth having replacements to hand or if they are present on the replacement axle then soak in penetrant and see if those come out ok. You can suspend the brake calipers and keep the brake lines all connected with some care.

I'd put new oil seals in the replacement axle casing and new O rings when you bolt up the half shaft assemblies. If you have ABS then take care with the sensors as well.

 

[MarkW]

Do you mean R17 (4.3:1) Oak?

If so I may have a need for one after Christmas depending on the diagnosis on my current diff

 

[diggerdave]

Oak, Colorado diffs are 4.1:1 or 4.3:1 ratio, with the back matching the front. No-one is quite sure what was fitted to what as far as I can tell (year? auto/man? swb/lwb? trim level?)

There is only a sticker on the front

You can work out your own ratio for certain by jacking up the car and counting turns

The stickers on the front also tell you the ratio but nobody is certain what the codes mean and Mr T doesn't state it anywhere

R16 is definitely 4.1:1 ratio (I have this and have tested)
R17 is 4.3:1 (I think I'm right in saying that others on this forum have tested this)
R27 nobody knows - it would be good to have it confirmed that it is 4.3:1
R56 ???
There are others, also not known

Out of interest what year, gearbox, wheelbase and trim is your R16 car?

 

[diggerdave]

Thanks Dave
My R16 is a 2001, manual, lwb, GX , d4d ..

Haha. Couldn't be more different from my R16 car, apart from having a manual gearbox! Hmm but are ALL manual cars 4.1:1?

Apologies for the diversion Oak, it's not answering your question (but might be vaguely useful background I guess).

 

[MarkW]

mines a manual with 4.3:1 according to the vin plate, A02B code. A google search only brings up this thread for the R27

I'll strip mine out over Christmas and count the teeth whilst trying to find out why its got noisey again

 

[Shayne]

My 2001 manual swb is R16 and my 98 manual swb is R17 .

 

[diggerdave]

Haha. It's almost like they just threw in whatever was handy that day...

I don't actually believe that of Toyota. They must have worked according to some logic that we can't (collectively) get our heads round

We need a separate thread (a sticky ideally) that lists what diff ratios people have and what the sticker on the front diff says, and people can add to it whenever they check their diff ratios...

 

[MarkW]

I've never looked for the sticker on mine but theres a good post on pradopoint about the axle codes

 

[diggerdave]

I've never looked for the sticker on mine but theres a good post on pradopoint about the axle codes

Yes, I've seen that on PradoPoint before when I was researching this issue. It sounded straightforward, although I seem to remember that they discovered some anomalies (although I might be confusing it with some other post).

Unfortunately it doesn't answer the question of what was fitted to what, nor is it much help if you are (say) trying to source a second hand diff/axle unless you have a very co-operative scrappy who can give you the chassis code of the donor vehicle (more chance of hell freezing over). Usually the best you get is what the sticker says on the front diff.

The usual advice is to match the R-code, which is ok but in a world with only a small number of second-hand diffs it would be really useful to know that an R16 is interchangeable with (say) R56 because they are both 4.1:1 ratios but we seem to be a long way from that point!