Christian Lee
Contributor
How many Toyota 4x4 owners have pushed their vehicles to the limit only to discover a handful of greasy chunks of metal when they pull the third member off the rearend to find out what that mysterious noise is all about? According to Kevin Norris of Turbo Direct, a lot of them have. For a number of years, Norris cleaned up on rebuilding the steady flow of Toyota rearends, but then he realized that simply replacing the gears was only a bandage on a much larger problem: Factory Toyota rearends aren't made to withstand the rigors that most serious four-wheelers put them through. An easy enough problem to diagnose, but the remedy? Simpler (not to mention more ingenious) than you might imagine.
Turbo Direct's Project 875 Drivetrain system is a bulletproof replacement rearend assembly. The unit uses stock Toyota axle tubes, so all of the factory flanges, spring perches, brake lines, and emergency-brake brackets are already in place, making the Project 875 a direct fit into your Toyota. The heart and soul of the Project 875 is the new housing, which holds a Chrysler 8 3/4-inch centersection. Turbo Direct jig-welds the housings to the Toyota axle tubes to create a unit that has been used successfully in 400-plus horsepower and 400-plus lb-ft of torque conditions.
Norris and his partner, Bob Morris, made a special trip down to our neck of the woods to show us their product and watch as 4 Wheel Parts Wholesalers installed a Project 875 into a '91 Toyota 4x4. Even at first glance we were impressed, but after witnessing the basic (and quick) installation, not to mention driving on the end product, we were astonished. With one exception, the Project 875 looked and felt like its factory counterpart. Good news for Toyota owners-that exception is that the Project 875 is bulletproof.
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