All-Pro off-road, in Hemet, California, is no stranger to properly executed solid-axle swaps or to traversing hardcore trails. All-Pro's rsum includes solid-axle swap kits for '86-'95 toyota pickups and 4runners as well as the taco' supreme solid-axle swap kit for the '96-'04 tacoma. Developing a solidaxle swap kit for the FJ cruiser was a natural progression. "We're the leader in the FJ cruiser aftermarket, and we're going to keep that leadership," states all-Pro's Jon Bundrant. "We know that not every FJ cruiser owner will end up swapping the ifs for a solid axle, but enthusiasts need to know that they can turn to us for that product if they want it. Our sas kit for the FJ cruiser is the first kit of its kind. We've done a solidaxle swap on another FJ cruiser, but that buildup was beyond the scope of what we would offer as a kit. We know of a couple of other FJ cruisers out there with swapped-in solid front axles, but no one has offered a solid-axle swap kit for the FJ cruiser until now."
We followed along, lenses and notepads in hand, as all-Pro's lead fabricator Mike Schoffstall and all-Pro ceo Jon Bundrant developed and installed the FJ sas kit using Jon's personal FJ as a lab rat. The kit is based on the highly successful taco' supreme sas kit but is not identical. Although the two kits do share some common parts, dimensions differ between these two vehicles.
The photos that follow capture the prototyping process. Snags were encountered and solutions were found. Stay tuned for the final version of the kit in our coverage of the '08 all-Pro Jamboree in Johnson valley.
How's this for something thick? All-Pro has seen some third members actually bend their mounting flanges under heavy loads. Diamond axle builds its toyota housings with a 1/2-inch-thick mounting flange - no more bending. All-Pro takes the strengthening campaign a step further and installs 10mm third member mounting studs in place of the stock-size 8mm studs. | 
If you enjoy metallic carnage and live to wrench on your rig on the trail, it's best to Avoid these parts. | 
The lightweight Wilwood rotors and calipers are not only great stoppers, they're also custom- designed to allow using 15-inch wheels, if desired. A custom mounting bracket ties the Wilwood caliper to the F-450 steering knuckle. |
Lower links take quite a bashing in the rocks, so these are made from .281-wall Dom. There's a 2.5-inch Johnny Joint at each end of the lower links. Johnny Joints are easily lubricated via grease zerks, and the joints' urethane inserts are fiendishly cheap to replace when they wear out. The upper link is made from .120-wall Dom since it's tucked out of the way above the axle. | 
The FJ cruiser uses a rack-and-pinion steering system in stock form. It doesn't work with the solid-axle swap, so it gets deleted and replaced with a steering box from an '86-'95 4WD toyota pickup. In addition to being the correct configuration for steering the solid axle, the steering box is much stronger than the rack-and-pinion steering system. All-Pro's weld-on mounting brackets are required to bolt the steering box in place on the driver-side framerail. | 
This is where many captions would read, "here's the inferior ifs system that will shortly be eliminated." Instead, we'll say that the stock ifs system works well in many situations, and it works that much better when augmented with an all-Pro upper control arm and an all-Pro bolt-in coilover built by Walker evans racing. Point the ifs system at a hardcore trail, though, and shortcomings start to emerge. |