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keitholivier

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About keitholivier

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    Michigan

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    keith_olivier_2003

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  1. Well folks, the sale of my rear axle closes the chapter for me on the Toyota Motorhome, but at the same time I am in the process of rebuilding a 93 2wd regular cab pickup, so Toyota stays in the family for me. For anyone local (midwest) I still have the radiator support panel and a good condition hood with the hinges which I will donate free to a good home. Send me a PM, and no, I will not be driving it to trucking yard, this is collect only. In the attachments, the rear axle is loaded up by a long distance transport company, on the way to its new owner in Montana.
  2. I have found that it is taking 2-3 minutes (or longer) to upload any page from this site. Picture upload comes back with a message that it can 't complete, even though it seems to upload anyway ? I am on cable, so my service is fast, and other sites load like normal. Preferential service by Comcast ? Any known technical issues that are being resolved ? Keith
  3. Keith, I need a Toy r end. Call or email me....

    prayforpeace@roadrunner.com....802 989 0177

  4. Bob The coach was rotted out due to roof leakage and the chassis rusted out from being parked outside for nearly 30 years in the midwest.... If the chassis had been OK I was going to make a flatbed out of it, but the way it is would be more work than its worth. I have a 93 regular cab truck I am restoring so thats enough projects for now. Weather has been lousy several weekends in a row, so I have not yet pulled the axle. If I had a ready buyer I may be more motivated...
  5. Greg, if one does go the way of an adapter, provided that the final offset is correct, the only components that are stressed differently to before are the adapter and the new wheel. Of the 2, the dually was always made for that offset and so was made strong enough. The adapter in the thickness concerned should be plenty strong. Provided the relationship of the tire to wheel bearings is as before, there will be no impact to the wheel bearings whatsoever. The major negative in this conversion is that the unsprung weight goes up by the weight of the spacer, the new wheel studs and the difference in weight of the dually vs regular rim. That weight difference is substantial. Every time you hit a bump in the road all of the suspension components have to work against all that inertia. For a vehicle that does not do a lot of mileage a year, I can see the attraction of having a single spare tire. Where more frequent use is the case, the conversion will lead to ball joints, shocks etc having a substantially reduced lifetime.
  6. In case anyone needs an axle upgrade, I am removing the complete rear full floating axle assembly from my 86 Dolphin. First $600 for the assembly lugnut to lugnut including the wheels and tires. I'm located in the Napoleon, MI area (midwest). The wheels were shot blasted and painted with zinc rich primer before being painted silver again. Thereafter the 4 new tires were fitted and they have less than 6k miles on them. Thanks Keith
  7. For sake of comparison to the OP, I today filled an 8x16x2 trailer with scrap, as well as a second 5x10 trailer. Unfortunately it rained all day and the temperature was in the 40's. By the time I got the trailers loaded up I was soaked. The last bits I shoveled using my snow shovel since there seem to be a million small pieces of 1x framing and insulation. I'm hoping for better weather this week to finish the job. The plywood floor and all the carpet need to come out as well as the front seats. I'm thinking of laminating a layer of Filon on both sides of a 1" sheet of extruded polystyrene to use as the rear wall of the cab. To close the hole over the roof of the cab I was going to also use filon sheet bonded to the roof of the cab and to the laminated panel in the rear. To give the filon roof some stiffness I need to find a curve which still permits attachment on the front and sides. The filon roof will let lots of light into the cab, since it is translucent. If neccersary, one can go to double wall on the roof at a later date, but single wall seems fine for most commercial box truck roofs.
  8. Well, after much procrastination, I today demo'ed the coachwork on my Dolphin. Not wanting to be too subtle, I used the 10' reach backhoe on my TLB. There was nothing to save. I did try to remove the bubble front window over the bunk that so many seem to be looking for, but it was so brittle that it cracked just from its own weight when held by one side... The roof was rotted, the front bunk area was rotted, the floor was rotted, the sills were rotted, need I say more... Hopefully the mold spores don't kill me.... Unfortunately, everyone who responded to my earlier postings wanted it for nothing, so I decided that I would turn it into a flat bed truck. I will get a few pictures of the carnage tomorrow.. The next step is to surgically remove the fiberglass molding at the cab, the cab seats, the rear floor, cut off the frame extensions and get all the trash hauled away. The original cab and doors is still in good shape, I need to rip out all the carpet and deal with any rust issues in the front footwells from water ingress over the years. The frame seems to be at least 4" higher after removal of all that weight... maybe even 6" at the rear. If I was in CA it would probably be no problem to find a donor regular cab, but here in the midwest they are as scarce as heck.
  9. Unfortunately, the ball/cup and the pressed steel backing, even the tubing is just mild steel. The design lifetime could not be more than 8 years, perhaps only 3 years in coastal areas. On some of the trucking sites there is better hardware out there, but the tubular frame has to be modified to fit our Toyotas and since they are stainless, not cheap. The one I found below is more reasonable than any I came across on my earlier searches: Take a look at this example here : https://www.berrylan...ror-p-7602.html
  10. Doug, the mirrors are the originals and not in good shape. The would continuously drift out of position and I doubt they are worth saving. If it wasn't for the fact that nothing new is a direct fit, I would have replaced them before my first trip.
  11. Well, the summer has come and gone, but no takers on the Dolphin. I guess it has been a pretty extreme year financially, so maybe that is not too surprising. If anyone is looking for a full floating rear axle or a rebuilt 22RE motor I could think of pulling them. Before winter comes this unit is going to the crusher. It also has sandblasted rims painted with cold galvanizing paint and 4 new load D range tires (on the rear axle) that have only done one 6000 mile trip. Here is a new link to one of the photos. Keith Near Napoleon,MI
  12. Greg If you had the tranny out, then you have been through the hardest work already and getting those tight bellhousing bolts out will be easy now. I found rebuilding the motor to be fairly easy. I had the block and sump sand blasted to grey metal and painted it with zinc rich primer, then high temp black paint to prevent future corrosion issues (road salt in my case). I also had worn out bearings at 70k, I guess the previous owners didn't change the oil or filter much. I did new piston, rings and new standard size mains and big ends. Despite the shot bearings, the crankpins were all in spec and finding a place to grind the crank was a major headache and not financially viable. I put on a new head (about $280 complete), oil pump, timing gear, chain,tensioner and sprockets. Deflashed and deburred the intake manifold so it would not strip the skin off my forearm when working near it. Put on a new exhaust manifold and heat shield (best $60 I ever spent). Put in a new thermostat. Water pump was fine, but replaced the hoses out of caution. If you go this route, I found Rock auto the best, but you will also find deals on ebay (buy it now). Check the deck height on new pistons. I didn't and between the new pistons and the new head, the compression ratio was that much higher that I had to buy premium fuel ever since the rebuild.
  13. Maineah, I think when they were first used, it was due to legitimate concerns regarding the rear axle weight rating. Once Toyota stepped in with the beefier axle, the tag axle was dropped to save costs and increase interior room. From that point, I guess the manufacturers kept piling more and more crap into the vehicles until even the rating of the dually axle was exceeded. Along with exceeding the rear axle weight rating, today typically the front is overloaded too. There does not seem to be a history of the proper full floating axles failing, no matter how overloaded the MH is, but with 14" wheels, one is at the end of the road tire wise. Even now, getting 14" class D tires is becoming more and more difficult. Tire Rack seems to have stopped carrying them. Last time I bought they were the last in stock at the warehouse in Indiana.
  14. I was at an RV surplus store today and trailer axles (complete with disk brakes) are a dime a dozen.. well almost. It seems that adding a second axle behind the existing drive axle will alleviate one of the biggest problems (overloading the rear axle). I take for granted that the chassis would have to be properly extended (seems many of the OE extensions were very weak). Going with a tag axle would allow lower spring rate springs on both axles, thus improving the ride. From my experience with trailers, I would expect an improvement in stability with the tandem axle. So does anyone have any feedback regarding their experiences ?
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