Need advice - wheels, gears, and more

[bikeguy18974]

Hi all

Well I just finished installing a 3" bodylift on my 86 4runner w/ 22re and auto trans. In a few weeks (hopefully not months) I will be getting a suspension lift so I'll be able to clear 35's.

I plan on getting a BDS 4-5" lift because of its no fine print warranty and because the shop recommended it over all the others.

Because of this type of lift I will need new wheels w/ different backspacing. I will be getting the tires with the wheels.

My first question is should I keep 15" wheels or go with something bigger (16, 16.5)?

Also should I go with cheapy steel wheels or cheapy aluminum wheels? Steel is about $60/each aluminum about $140. I like cheap but don't like rust. But if the cheapy aluminum wheels are much lighter then I'd pay for that. Looks don't matter much to me.

The shop also does gears so I am thinking I should get this done while I am there. It seems I currently have 4.30's and I run 31" tires and it does alright overall but feels weak at times. I was thinking 5.29's w/ the 35's. It would be alot of road miles, some light trails, no real rock crawling.

Lastly if you guys think I should post all these questions in different threads let me know for the future. Different boards have styles and I'm not sure what to do on this board.

[fourwd1]

With your 4.30 ratio I'm guessing your 31s weren't on there originally. The 4 cyl/auto/31" tire package came with 4.87 gears. You defenitely want 5.29s.

One thing to think of - If you ever plan to add lockers, wait until you have enough $$ for both the gears and lockers at the same time. It could cost you $600-1000 in extra labor charges (and that's assuming you remove the 3rds and carry them in) to do it in 2 steps.

If you have the shop pull the 3rds it will cost a lot more, period.

Steel wheels = cheap and will take more abuse.

Your post is fine.

[Sean]

15 rims and tires are the cheapest so I would stick with them. Steal rims will be fine if you don't care about looks. Durabilty should'nt be an issue since you say you only do light wheeling.
Rockstomper has 2" backspaced steel rims that would work for you.
Yeah 5.29 gears are what is reccomended for that tire size, it's the ratio I would go with. If you upgrade to a cheap locker (lock rite,e-z locker) later it will only cost you like a 100 bucks to get installed. If you get a detroit or an arb the set up will be quite a bit higher so you may consider adding that into the cost of the upgrade. Lockers are great but you can do a lot of wheeling without them, especially if you are not lifting a tire often.
I noticed you listed Thornbirds as your future tire. I highly reccomend you reconsider this. Ask some people that have run these tires, they are complete shit. Impossible to balance and terrible on road an off. If you want a swamper, which IMO would be stupid for a daily driver even on a hard core rig, get the swamper sx or even the ssr radial. These still will be more dangerous then a regular radial like a goodyear or BFG but not quite as crappy as the Thornbird. For your own saftey consider a pair of MTR's or BFG's. Blowing a 35" tire out at highway speed is no fun. Chris G from All Pro blew a swamper out at highway speed and now he trailers his rig and runs radials on his daily.
Hope this helps.

[bikeguy18974]

Thanks for the advice guys.

Looks like I'll have to check into those MTR's. I didn't realize the bad rep with the swampers.

I'll also talk to the shop to see what he recommends doing and will charge as far lockers. If it will be significantly more then I may wait until I can afford to do the lockers and gears at the same time.

[Diggertoy]

As the others said 5:29's are the best !

I have a 89 yota pu. 4" procomp susp. lift, 35 muds, trimmed fenders, 5:29's locked with quicklocks, downey header, flowmaster, accel, twin optimas, smittybuilts, hellas, swayaway torsions, rancho shocks and stabilizer, etc...

The 5:29's work great for pushing the 35's with my 4 banger......whel really well, and chirp them on the street. the only drawback is that yu won't really be going any faster than 75 on the freeway.......which is fine by me.........

ps: the pic to the side is before the lift, and tires and gears, etc... ......Mike won't change it to my current pic I've sent

[iluvdrt]

do the 5.29s, lockrights,and black rock crawlers with chrome center caps. get the mtrs or bfgs. ive not had probs with swampers but they dont last long. do not get thornbirds they suck.