Why solid frong axle?

[DevinSixtySeven]

being in boulder, co, i see my share of jackasses with hummers (not hmmwvs) in the mountains, all assuming that because they have a hummer, they can go anywhere. i have seen more stuck hummers spinning wheels on rolling terrain than i have ever seen solid axle vehicles. in respect to the hmmwv, when you properly load the vehicle, it does well on and off road, the ride isn't exactly a cadillac, but when the springs are properly loaded a hmmwv is perfectly capable of smoothly transporting 100K$ of network and communications equipment over washboard road and rocky, chunky, steep terrain (don't tell my boss ), or carrying a 100KW laser turret around in the desert at 60mph.
my point here is that (like everyone else so far mentioned) IFS and solid axles were built for different things, specifically IFS is best at traversing light terrain at high speed, which is why tacomas and tundras are often used for baja racing with long travel kits, and why the IS racing tundra has full independent long travel suspension, and why the hmmwv also has independent suspension--if they had solid axles, they'd be speed limited over rough terrain, and consequently get their asses pounded by the bad guys. like our tundras, they were built for carrying loads comfortably at high speed over smooth to moderate terrain.
dodge 3500s have dana 60s (i think...maybe they're 44s) because they're big, huge, gargantuan, large, beefy, strong, massive, sturdy setups capable of being bounced off a few dozen boulders while you're pulling your ex's house off its foundation. actually, ive seen quite a few rockcrawlers, small toyota trucks and landcrushers , dana 60s front and rear, and a ton of scrapes in the metal on the pumpkins (the rocks lose, not the dana 60). tundras have IFS because of a long-past toyota change from solid axle to the more baja racing friendly IFS setup. our trucks have a high speed heritage, not a crawling/towing/hauling heritage. btw, toolbox, a 37" tire is currently considered "small" at the rockcrawling championships .
get an old Toy and swap it to Mog axles front and rear , weld the rear axle solid at the differential, put a detroit in the front, then use your Tundra to tow it to the chosen carnage location and beat up on jeeps .

-Sean

[DevinSixtySeven]

Originally posted by flyin6
Call me crazy, but I am currently considering changing the IFS in my factory Ivan Stewart to a solid front for all the heavy duty reasons discussed in this forum. I am perplexing as to which axle and steering system to use as well as which suspension setup...which parts and how?????

check out offroad solutions, www.offroadsolutions.com, they do a lot of sas conversions for tacomas, trucks, cruisers, "crushers", 4runners, etc.....you can fabricate a steering setup for sas using an ifs steering box with a drag link and high-steer conversion. it looks really odd because you only use one end of the ifs steering box, but it can be done, it's just not as responsive as the ifs rack & pinion. you might be better off changing the power steering box to something else. as for an axle, the land cruiser axles might be too short...if youre going sas, might as well get a dana 44 or 60 and get another for the rear as well, that would be a much easier swap than the front, you could probably just grab one off a scrapped american truck, theyre pretty common, and incidentally that would also allow you to go directly to disc brakes in the rear if you got a newer axle, i think.

anyway...

-sean