Solid Axle Swap: An SAS Conversion For A 1998 Toyota Tacoma
An SAS conversion for a 1998 Toyota Tacoma
Bruce W. SmithWriter
The grass is always greener on the other side of the off-road fence. We spend a lot of time and money modifying our rigs, changing what OEM designers and engineers spent years refining and fine-tuning. Purpose built, purpose driven. That’s how a good many 4x4 owners look at their rides.
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A great example of such thinking is those who go through the effort of swapping out their 4x4’s independent front suspension (IFS) for a straight-axle. IFS works wonderfully to smooth out the ride as each front wheel moves independently from the one on the opposite side, but many wheelers see IFS as a hindrance, not a help, when smooth roads give way to big rocks and deep ruts—when strength becomes more important than weight, or the need for greater suspension articulation outweighs a car-like ride. For many, a solid axle up front rules off-road.
Toyota 4Runners and Tacomas are a perfect example of that way of thinking for many owners who live to off-road. When Toyota dropped solid axles in the U.S. models with the introduction of the IFS-equipped ’86s, many die-hard Toyota off-road aficionados wept. Then they wiped away the tears and figured out how to convert the 4x4s from IFS to solid axle.
Solid axle swaps (SAS) are relatively simple in concept. However, they require deft skills with a plasma cutter and welder, along with the necessary pre-planning so one has all the right parts to make the conversion worthy of the time and money spent making it happen. Finding the SAS kits and parts is easy now that four-wheelers have been doing them for nearly three decades. We found that out when Casey Castle, a tech at Dunk’s Performance in Springfield, Oregon, decided he wanted take his ’98 Tacoma to a new level of off-road performance.
His third-hand Tacoma sat atop a six-inch IFS lift, but it lacked what he desired in articulation and travel. He went parts shopping at a local salvage yard to find a front axle from under an ’83 Jeep Wagoneer along with a steering box from an early ’90s Tacoma as the base components for the swap. Then he pieced together the rest of the conversion parts from Sky’s Off-Road Design, Trail-Gear, and Tom Wood’s Custom Drive Shafts to turn his Toy into a reliable, long-legged, mud-and-rock-running trail rig that’s still quite suitable as a daily driver.
We followed Castle’s Tacoma SAS conversion from beginning to end, then went for a trail ride on its inaugural off-road outing. Doing an SAS on one of these first-gen Tacoma trucks proves the grass is definitely greener and better tasting on the solid axle side of the off-road fence. Read on for the highlights of the conversion.
