Well, the time has come. I am going to 4.56 gears in the rig. Long term plan is to turn this into my hunting, fishing, offroading beast. But in the near future the 4.56's will help me alot with towing. So lets get the show started.

Truck ready for some attention.

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Up on jack stands ready to tear into the old girl.

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Quite a few missing pieces here, after a few minutes of teeth gnashing when I realized I had to remove the front diff to do the gear swap.

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And here is most of them. Calipers, rotors, wheel bearings, cv shafts and a few odds and ends.

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And here is the little beast. Too close to the steering rack as well as the front frame member to do anything in place.

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Now here is a pic of the work area. New shop in the back yard sure makes it nice to do some fun projects.

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And here is a great shot of the diff. You can clearly see the drive shaft is below the center line of the axles, hense the term Low Pinion or standard rotation (or cut) gears. This is great news for anyone who wants to do a gear change as basically any gear ratio is now available to us.

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Stock gears in the housing.

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And here is the proof of standard rotation gears being right for our trucks. New ring gear beside the stock ones. Same rotation.


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Unfortunetly this is where it will sit until next weekend. I am in a course this next week and will not have time to work on it. And Sunday is family day, so no chance there.

 

Awesome write up. I wish I had the ***** to tear into my truck like that. I know I could probably do it

 

Very nice! That's a nice setup you have there with your workshop too.

 

clean shop! I cant wait to see results

 

Thanks guys. Yeah the shop is awesome to have. You can pull anything in there to work on it. I have an 11ft ceiling in there, so I am thinking about getting a low height hoist good for 6000lbs and up to 6ft of lift to go with it. Probably won't happen for a bit though.

 

I have been pricing out lifts... they really arent that expensive. 1500 or so can get you a pretty good lift. Articulated lifts are pretty expensive though.

I found a bunch of lifts in the back of my last auto trader... might be worth looking at, around tax time.

 

Good info so far!

 

It took my mechanics 2 days to do the install on my dakota, but it was well worth it in the long run, enjoy

 

Good for you, it is nerve racking for me to tear into the Dak. I don't know much about gear changes, but I am definately looking forward to this write up.

I do have a few questions for you though:

I though I saw wheel spacers in one of the photos, is this to clear the tires or cosmetic?

What size tires are you running? They look like the Hankook Dynapro M/T's.