I have hooked up with a Tacoma-area boxer mechanic named Jason Metzner (anyone heard of him?) and he says there are only a couple of shops in the U.S now that rebuild rear ends, and that that job costs over two grand, so the best deal is to find a low-mileage used rear drive. That way you don't have to open it up, you just install it. I have found one through Re-Psychle, which is going out of business at the end of this month. If you want anything from them, get it now.
Some of you may recall that it was I that had the "roll-on-roll-off lurching" problem. The cause, at least in part, is almost certainly from the extreme wear in the splines that drive the rear wheel. So this should help. Also the ring and pinion gear set, which are integral to the final drive, must be less worn than on the 175k miles rear drive I will be taking off.
While this work is being done I intend to have Jason do some other stuff too! He thinks he hears rod knock and timing chain rattle. The engine has about 135k miles on it, so a preventative rebuild sounds logical to me. By the way, the reason my engine has less miles than my rear drive is that at 75k miles a rod broke on the original engine, requiring me to buy a used one that had 35k miles on it. While the engine is open I should inspect those rods real well! I believe mine was not the only R65 that suffered a broken rod.
Feel free to run this post in a different category if that better gets valuable info out to the members.
