Shaving a Hilux

[beebee]

Posted a thread on Snake about this without too much response.

Anybody shaved a hilux diff housing? How much can be removed and what thickness plate did you use to patch it back up. Someone also said that they incorporated a skid plate as well.

[2car]

Search the Toyota Truck section on Pirates. There's an interesting thread with a few links.

I found it:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74392

[dave]

I think allpro also has somthing go to section about us them have a look to the yellow singal cab throw his section they talk about it

[POS]

Why do you want to shave the diff

I haven't looked at it fully but i would imagine you would only be able to shave perhaps 25 to 30mm off it and if you plate it with something fairly stong (remembering that your crown wheel is now really close to the bottom) something like 8mm plate would be enough.

So take 8mm from 25 equals 17mm or 8 mm from 30 mm leaves you with 22mm, seems to be a fair bit of work for 17 to 22mm of extra clearance, If its say more than 40 or 50mm i would look at doing it.

Does anyone know how much clearence you gain

[taziiy]

whats the real benifit of doing that . seems like a lot of work for nothin

[2car]

Could be the difference between stopping and going. Maybe there nothing else left to modify?

[NICK]

Why do you want to shave the diff

I haven't looked at it fully but i would imagine you would only be able to shave perhaps 25 to 30mm off it and if you plate it with something fairly stong (remembering that your crown wheel is now really close to the bottom) something like 8mm plate would be enough.

So take 8mm from 25 equals 17mm or 8 mm from 30 mm leaves you with 22mm, seems to be a fair bit of work for 17 to 22mm of extra clearance, If its say more than 40 or 50mm i would look at doing it.

Does anyone know how much clearence you gain

you can cut almost an inch, so about 25mm, this is what i am doing to my wide track.

anyway, POS you say it is only going to be about 15mm, on a rolling radius isnt a 37 only about 20mm bigger than a 35?



NICK

[NICK]

to shave a shit load more off you would need an HP rear and till the pinion right up, shaving it at standard pinion angle is hardly worth the trouble as you run into all kinds off dramas with mounting studs, drain plugs etc.
When tilted up it is possible to cut the back of the diff houseing away and only mod the drain plug. The way inwhich i am doing mine is cutting the housing down with a grinder, was going to use a plasma cutter but you need to keep the temp down, then milling it flat and making the plate out of 10mm to fit inside the cut down section if that makes sence.


NICK

[2car]

you can cut almost an inch, so about 25mm, this is what i am doing to my wide track.

One way of looking at this is: Every inch of extra ground clearance is the same as a two inch increase in tyre size.

[cplux]

seems a worthwhile mod to me especially if you cannot/do not want to go bigger tyres, bigger tyres are not always the solution.
Nick keen to see how yours goes i am very keen to do at least my front one

[beebee]

I was talking to Richard from 4x4 Engineering in Brisbane about it the other day. We were only really talking about getting rid of the drain plug and surround but I had been thinking that while he was at it, it would be worth getting rid of as much as possible. What Nick said is right though and I hadn't really thought about it in much detail. On the surface it seems like a great way to gain clearance but on second thoughts - not as easy as I first thought.

Thanks for everyone's imput.

[ausyota]

I thought I would add some pics and info to this thread because its in the bible now
Please note the pics were lifted off Pirate. They are not of my work.
When I have finished my shave I will post some pics of it.

You can see in one pic they have used a piece of flat bar as a temp spacer to ensure clearance and oil getting to the crownwheel.
Also another good tip is when welding the inside of the diff use a spray can of welding anti-spatter spray to stop the balls of spatter sticking and later coming loose in your diff oil.
Paul.

[80UTE]

I recently built up a cruiser front housing and shaved the pumpkin to the diff centre mounting face leaving the front and rear faces of the pumkin as original as possible to retain as much strengh. it was able to get around 20mm increase in ground clearance and still keep about 5mm between the c/w and the bottom of the housing.

Wally

[shavedtoy]

not diff just body

[beebee]

Since this is in the bible I thought I'd better give an update. Firstly - this is an OLD thread. It's now 3 years after my inital post and I've probably had both diffs shaved for around 2 1/2 years now in my hilux. I gained 15mm from removal of the drain plug and 10mm from the shaving. However the biggest gain was received by making the bottom of the housing flat and smooth. There is an amazing amount of gauges in the bottom of my housings but I rarely seems to get caught up by them. They just slide over rocks so much more effortlessly. It is a mod that I would highly recommend and as a bonus it's cheap!

For interests sake, I plated mine with 6mm mild steel plate. I actually used a bit of 50x6mm flat bar radiused to suit the housing and then just cut out a rectangular hole to suit the width and length of the flat bar. I had the centre bolted in when I welded it and have had no troubles since. However mine always seem to leak but they also get a little more punishment than most.

Another tip is that if you're always threading bolts into the bottom two holes in the housing to act as drain plugs, you will eventually strip out the steel ring in the housing that the centre bolts to. I have endded up with helicoils in the bottom two holes to restore the thread.