Hello from Atlanta

[gtblazer]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum. I'm a long time TB owner and have done some reading here over the years. I ordered my 2003 TB from the factory, it's a 4x4 LT that I ordered so I could get the G80 and the skid plates. Up until recently, it's always been my daily driver so I've never done much besides upsize the wheels to some 265/75R16s that I squeezed in there by grinding just a tad off the knuckle that gets in the way. That's all I've done to the suspension anyway, I did put HID bulbs in the lows and LEDs for the highs and fogs and changed the wiring so that the fogs are DRLs and all six come on when I switch to highs (lows don't turn off).

Anyway, after 200K miles, my TB still looks and runs great, it's been a fabulous vehicle that I've had next to no problems with and every single thing on it still works fine (seriously knocking on wood here). I've always wanted to do some more work on it but never had the ability with it being my daily driver. I'm an Eagle Scout myself and have a couple of young Scouts at home now and am doing more and more camping so combine that with my TB not being a daily driver and it's time to get to work. Unfortunately, when I ordered my TB, it didn't occur to me to get the 4.11 gear to offset putting larger tires on there so I just have the 3.73 gear. Hopefully I'm remembering those gear sizes correctly, but regardless, my goal is to change my diffs to 4.11 gears and put a lift on my TB. I don't have any questions (yet), just doing a lot of reading right now and hoping to learn from here what will work best for me. I was afraid I might have waited too long to do this in terms of there still being parts available but I'm happy to see from my reading so far that people are still putting lifts on TBs!

- Brian

[ErikSS]

3.73 are fine. 4.10 would have been better of coarse. But at least you didn't get the 3.24...
I would encourage investing time and energy into the planning stage. I used personal experience and the build pages to help guide me.

[Diacom]

Brian,

As Erik said, 3.73's with your planed tire size is fine. If you intend to be in the mountains I would also recommend a transmission cooler early in the build. Otherwise, everything you need for the most part should be here on the site for the most part.

Good Luck.

[gtblazer]

Thanks for the tips on the gears! When I first bought my TB, I had a ski boat that I pulled and had no trouble on the factory tires. However, I tried pulling our Scout trailer last year and it got the tranny hot enough to spit out some fluid so I plan on at least going up to the 4.11. Since I don't use my TB much any more and thus don't care as much about fuel eco, have noticed some people have put 4.56 gears in and am curious. I'll read some more and see if that would work with the carriers on my TB, thanks.

[Diacom]

If your TB has a V8 instead of the I6 is should already have the 8.6" ring gear. This allows for better locker selection for sure, but I don't think it makes a difference for gearing.

As far as 4.56 goes, I'm running that ratio with 35" tires. It's about perfect for that combo. I'd stick with 4.10 unless going 33" or 35" tires.

[gtblazer]

I've got the I6 so I assume that means I have the 8.0 rear end. As I've been reading, it sounds like our older TBs can't handle the 4.56 without disabling ABS, is your ABS disabled or is there a workaround? I'm hoping I can at least move to the 4.10 without having ABS problems.

[Diacom]

I swapped an 8.6" rear into my 03. I haven't pulled the fuse for the ABS yet, I just pull up on the E-brake handle when the dinger starts to go off and that stops the dinger. The lights on the dash however stay on.

4.10's are a factory option, there's info here on the site about having your computer programmed with the info for that ratio. May take a bit of digging but it's still there if you look.