Thread: Hilux diff conversion

this is sounding like an awsome build up, looking forward to some pics as things start to happen.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Is he on here? He's def on Outerlimits.

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/members/dbongard.html

Originally Posted by disco_thrasher

Okay after a late night call to the Usa East coast gear supply Drivetrain Specialists East Coast Gear Supply they are going to make up my arb lockers over there and ship them out ,by doing this is saving me over $1300 it is quite amazing that a Australian company ARB will not make this up here but are willing to charge you almost $1600 dollars to buy locker and part to exchange into the locker and a USA company will happliy build your locker to your spec and ship it out to you for just over a $1000
****ed off ARB lets make the locker here in australia ship it to USA then rebuild side gears and ship it back still cheaper than buying the locker here before rebuilding it
angry
My 2cent rave
sorry Simon can not justify getting them here

The guys building your diffs are doing exactly what any diff shop in Australia could do for you - they are buying the Toyota 8" and a Rover gear set and doing the swap.

As for the difference in buy price, it is simple stock market theory - buy low and sell high.

The reason you got them so much cheaper out of the USA is a case of global economics. The Australian $ has gone through the roof and the American $ hasn't. The diffs you are buying would have boarded a ship from Australia to Seattle no less than 4 months ago when our dollar was much lower. And like any clever buyer, the American wholesalers buy up when their dollar is at its highest and ours at it's lowest. ARB stands to lose just as much on everything we are shipping to the USA now once the dollar re-corrects. Does that make sense?

The sacrifice that you are making, however, is that it tends to be your retailer who sticks his neck out to help if anything goes wrong along the way, and for you that is some guy you never met who is too far away to get get involved. But a bargain is a bargain...so it's hard to ignore.

-daniel
AIR LOCKER

PS - Tks to Ben for the heads-up.

Daniel i understand the global finacial **** ,it just angers me that a ARB shop over here can not take out the brand new un-used toyo side gears and replace them with rover side gears and sell the locker at std price which i would then buy it from a ARB store ,but they want to charge me 1145AUD for the locker which i am happy to pay then a further 400AUD for the rover side gears when the usa company will do exactly that pull them out and put them in for no additional cost
regards Kelvin

Originally Posted by dbongard

The guys building your diffs are doing exactly what any diff shop in Australia could do for you - they are buying the Toyota 8" and a Rover gear set and doing the swap.

As for the difference in buy price, it is simple stock market theory - buy low and sell high.

The reason you got them so much cheaper out of the USA is a case of global economics. The Australian $ has gone through the roof and the American $ hasn't. The diffs you are buying would have boarded a ship from Australia to Seattle no less than 4 months ago when our dollar was much lower. And like any clever buyer, the American wholesalers buy up when their dollar is at its highest and ours at it's lowest. ARB stands to lose just as much on everything we are shipping to the USA now once the dollar re-corrects. Does that make sense?

The sacrifice that you are making, however, is that it tends to be your retailer who sticks his neck out to help if anything goes wrong along the way, and for you that is some guy you never met who is too far away to get get involved. But a bargain is a bargain...so it's hard to ignore.

-daniel
AIR LOCKER

PS - Tks to Ben for the heads-up.

Originally Posted by disco_thrasher

Daniel i understand the global finacial **** ,it just angers me that a ARB shop over here can not take out the brand new un-used toyo side gears and replace them with rover side gears and sell the locker at std price which i would then buy it from a ARB store ,but they want to charge me 1145AUD for the locker which i am happy to pay then a further 400AUD for the rover side gears when the usa company will do exactly that pull them out and put them in for no additional cost
regards Kelvin

You must have found a diff shop who is willing to put the old gear set back on his shelf as a spare. There is no return on used gears...so that is pretty cooperative. Maybe his volumes are high enough that he can foresee a near future use for the old gears, or maybe he already has a use lined up. There might just as likely be a diff shop in Aus willing to do that also. That's more of a shop by shop customer service thing than an Oz vs USA thing.

-daniel
AIR LOCKER

well why would a unused set of toyo side gears not get used or sold on over here,i find that very hard ,and i did call about 8 diff shops Sydney Brisbane and Gold coast before i ventured overseas both the lockers in my truck now where bought and instaleld by my local friendly arb shop , and the rear also repaired at a good price at my local friendly ozzie run arb shop ,so i have no grouge about arb or its shops here ,so if arb pride them selves on been a good ozzie product /customer service shop why are they not doing what a independant usa diff shop will do
and if this conversion is getting so popular why is this not a option in your products
cheers
Kelvin

Originally Posted by dbongard

You must have found a diff shop who is willing to put the old gear set back on his shelf as a spare. There is no return on used gears...so that is pretty cooperative. Maybe his volumes are high enough that he can foresee a near future use for the old gears, or maybe he already has a use lined up. There might just as likely be a diff shop in Aus willing to do that also. That's more of a shop by shop customer service thing than an Oz vs USA thing.

-daniel
AIR LOCKER

It would be nice if this could be had as an option from ARB though?

Just as you can get a sals/D60 Airlocker with 16 / 24 / 30 / 35 / 40? spline side gears.

Unfortunately 'popular' doesn't necessarily mean 'viable'.
Keeping in mind that we need to manufacture in batches in order to stay profitable, so we would need to build no less than 50 of them that way. And then none of those 50 would go to shops as shelf stock because nobody would bother carrying such a specialized application, so they would sit here in Melbourne. Rover is a global application, so when I said 'popular' I was referring to a combo of Aus, UK & Europe, South America, USA, etc.
And most people wouldn't be willing to wait 4-12 weeks for their 'special diff' to show up by sea when they can just make one out of a Toyota diff and some Rover diff spares now. And air frieghting a special diff to save time would cost more than the extra gear set.

Funny thing is that before we recently redesigned everything in order to commonize the gear sets geometry for easy swap-ability everyone used to have to buy a new gear set and then pay a machine shop to re-machine parts of the diff and gears to make them fit, thus costing more than double what it costs now to simply do a 5 minute part swap ... and nobody complained back then.

-daniel
AIR LOCKER