1981 Toyota 4x4 Pickup - The Phoenix Project

	After the engine fried and died in '03, I had it rebuilt at a local shop. Have you heard of the adage, "cheap, quick, good: pick two"? In this instance, I only got one. The rebuilder took forever and did a shoddy job. It was cheap, but you indeed get what you pay for. There was so much piston-to-cylinder clearance that one of the rings slipped out of its groove and folded between the piston and the cylinder wall.	It gets worse. The rebuilder turned down the rear main seal journal on the crankshaft until it no longer contacted the seal. I saw the gap between the seal journal and the seal but mistakenly figured it was a case of the seal simply needing to properly seat itself as the engine rotated. A cascade of oil sliding down the bellhousing cover told the real story.
The solid front axle is one of this truck's best features. The '81 Toyota front axle received a short gusset between the pumpkin and the driver-side spring perch. The ponderous skidplate and integrated truss was in place when I bought the truck. It's a stout piece, but it eats up ground clearance. In place of the skinny stock piece, I added an All-Pro heavy-duty tie rod with FJ80 tie-rod ends for some extra strength.	Here's a smorgasbord of upgrades. Crossover steering from All-Pro Off-Road is the way to really get a Toyota front axle working well on twisty trails. Crossover steering eliminates the factory push/pull steering's tendency to bind up when the driver-side wheel is drooped out. All-Pro's Hy-steer steering configuration repositions the tie rod and the drag link above the leaf springs for bend-free ground clearance.	The '79-'85 rear axle is fairly narrow and has skinny axletubes. Thankfully, it's easy to bolt an '86-'95 rear axle in place. The '86-'95 axles are about 3 inches wider and have beefier axletubes and larger brakes. The third members are interchangeable between the two versions of this axle. TAP Recycling in Rancho Cordova, California, had an '87 rear axle in stock and ready to go. Deaver leaf packs are made in the USA from domestically produced raw material. The shorter springs at the top of the photo will bolt to the stock mounting positions. The rear springs at the bottom are designed for a spring-under configuration and require new spring pads on the axle, spring hangers, spring plates, and shackles. After this photo was taken, I decided that the rear springs were better suited to a prerunner than a trail truck for ground-clearance reasons.