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Ok so I bought this truck because I needed alot of locking space for my tools when I was working as a carpenter. Now its the daily driver I despise. I figured one person in a thousand might see this truck and want the whole story. I have parts of it, no proof it's true it is all anecdotal evidence from the annals of the internet. It all started with the Hilux we all know and love. Now in the mid 80s the rest of the world had real deal crew cab Hilux trucks, the US did not. The two stories I heard were as follows: 1: Due to the luxury car tax of the time importing a four door crew cab would have made a cheap rugged pickup oddly expensive. 2: Toyota sales execs were not sure there was a market for crew cab trucks in the US. Now in 2019 we laugh because new trucks are all 4 door SUVS with half a bed slapped on. Either way Toyota wanted a pilot program. So they did 200 of these weirdos a year for three years. How'd they do it? They stretched the frame 30 inches with some box channel. Then they sent em to a fiberglass coach-works company out of Santa Monica where a deck was laid down and a half-@$$'d roll-bar bolted in. What did this do to the great Toyota drive train? Wrecked it. The single short driveshaft with nice slip spline action got replaced by a two piece with a carrier bearing. I'm not kidding the driveshaft is like 4 feet long. What did it do to its barley acceptable acceleration? Wrecked it. "My turd rainbow" has the miserable head gasket detonating 3.0 3VZE. it does not respond well to extra weight. What did it do to the rugged rigid frame? - ehh I'm too depressed to keep going. Why is it called a "turd rainbow"? because most of them were tan with a nasty brown lighting bolt or rainbow stripe. At least mine came in cool colors. Thanks all for hearing me rant about it. -There is a reason I own a Comanche now...

yesterday i finally swapped front axles on my MJ. and i was finally able to hook up the front drive shaft as well as put it into full-time 4wd. and it makes a odd clanking sound whenever i turn... last year sometime my stock BA-10 /w 231 died (the TC was fine) I replaced the old transmission and TC with an AX-15 / 242, i drove it home with the stock axles (D30 with CAD locked and D35 with 3.07 gears) it had the same strange sounds. I locked the cad to the open position and the sounds stopped. so i replaced the front and rear axles to a non cad D30 and a D44 with 3.55 gears. and hooked up the 4wd and it makes the same sounds. before i put the new D30 on i checked the gears for cracks and broken teeth, it was good. if i go straight there are not any strange sounds only when i turn.