Rebuild Project - Updated 6-28-10

Thanks cable! yeah I used a cherry picker to hold the front then I lifted the back up off and set it on the ground. LOL my steering box did that too I thought it was dry and still decided to make a big mess on the floor.

lol,who needs a jack!I cut the transmember out of 4alluhaters truck on the cherrypicker,I got a pic of it and my frame hangin on it somewhere,that truck is down near you now off I-675 exit 2 or 4,something like that,he sold it for dirt cheap,you might see it rolling around down there.didn't even get to finish it.

Hmm.... I better get going on mine and catch up! I like your lower arm mods, I've been back and forth between something like that, factory strut rod, and just building some from scratch. Are you on spindles? or did you just step the ball joint mounts on the arm and call it good?

I'm gaining speed man better hurry! By on spindles do you mean using drop spindles? I have the Beltech drop spindles. What is stepping the ball joint mounts? They are in their factory location.

A little update today. I finished fabbing up the frame mounts to complete fabbing for the triangulated lower arms. Now on to the upper control arms! I'm just going to give my self more clearance for lift and make them not look so factory. I'm starting to get pretty far on the front. After the upper arms are done I can set the engine and rack and pinion. Then I can start to finish all the welds in preparation for primer!

sorry man I was up too late last night, looking at the pics with better eyes it was the turn stops on the front of the arms I was seeing, and was making me think that you had built the arms like drop arms.

Yeah I meant drop spindles also

No worries, happens to the best of us lol

dang thats brian bateys old yota i didnt know it was back in ga. also baha i have a friend who has a rebuilt 5 speed he paid $800 for it he said he would like to get that much for it. but he doin a motor swap cant tell you what he doin but he wont need that tranny. hit me up at 678-357-2097

hey baha progress is lookin good!

i'm going rack and pinion as well on my 73 hilux. i've literally searched hundreds of cars at the yard with no luck, but after digging around i found a rack that should work well. it's a 70's pinto rack, and stock the pivots are 24.5" apart, but these are narrowed 5" making them 19.5" apart. the lower pivots on the yotas are around 19.25".

here is a link.. they aren't cheap lol



i'm running a 1uz from a 89 ls400, and the stock exhaust manifolds won't clear my steering (with rack and pinion, and my front suspension is based on the 84-95 model). the sc400 manifolds are kind of like block huggers so i'm hoping to use those, if not i'll have to fab a header. also got to clear the motormounts.. it's gunna be real tight.

hope the link helps

Thanks Burnzya! That was the same problem I was having. A member off mazdabscene found one for me that was 22" that was as close as I found. I'm going to try the yard here to give it one more try since I need to find a transmission anyway. I'll let you know if I find anything.

Thanks again for the link!

Another update moving right along.

For my needs the factory control arms were fine just that they limited lift, and I wanted them not to look so factory. So what I did was sort of build my new arms on top of the old ones to keep the stock geometry in place.

I formed more steel bar using a piece of tubing as a form shown below. It was generally pretty easy to be consistent I just had to make sure to keep the piece flat, and make marks to duplicate the same shape.



Here are all of my pieces bent and ready to form my control arms.



I was unsure about using the tubing to hide the ugly bushings from the factory control arms but it has grown on me. I plan to add polished aluminum caps to complete the look. One side is fabbed up. I really like how it is all coming together. I also plan to box them in and leaving room to make another cap to cover the ball joint.





I'm going to the junkyard next week so hopefully by end of next week other side will be done, steering rack will be in place then I can set the engine