well i have saved up the money now it is time to regear and add a rear locker. i do have a question about what gearing to get. First i am trying to figure out what gearing i have. I looked up on line but couldnt get a definite answer on what mine has, best i could find online was that i have 3.58 gears in it now. i tried to confirm this by jacking up a tire and turning the drive shaft. the best i could figure out my drive shaft turned just over 2 times for each rotation of the tire. by just over i mean with in an inch or so. if i am correct that would mean my gear ratios is approx 2.1. the only other way to figure it out i know of is to pull it apart and count teeth, i dont really want to pull it apart to check then put it back togeather while i wait for parts to get delivered. my tire size changed from approx 28.5 inches to 33 which is just under a 10% change. my thinking is once i figure out my gearing, figure out what is ten percent lower and go with that. am i thinking correctly about that? my other question is about where to get them. i keep coming back to randys ring and pinon, has any one worked with them? has any one bought gears elsewhere? oh i will be installing them my self. thanks for any info

 thanks for the references. according to my vin i have the 3.58 gears. what threw me off was when i did the wheel spin to check it. i found a reference earlier that said you doubble the number you get when you spin the wheel once. i got two turns on the drive shaft per one turn of the tire. so i was thinking it was just over 2.0:1. according to the reference you doubble that which would give me just over 4.0:1 or 4.10:1 gear ratio. then the link that Mike posted verified that. thank you very much for that one. yes i will be doing the install myself but since it is my dd i cant really afford to have it torn apart any more than absalutly neccisary.

man this is a great forum. between the 4runner site given by mike and the gear calculator given by nathan i think i have decided to go with 5.29. 4.88 would get me back to about stock final drive ratio, but i think going one set lower will help out with the increased weight. thank you all very much for the help on this

ah thank you for the heads up on the possible vibrations. i will get more info before i buy

yes i will have to regear both the front and rear at the same time. otherwise once i put it in 4wd the front and rear would be spinning at diffrent rates and cause some bad problems

Not toyota but close.. I had 4:56"s in my trooper with 31" Mud tires. The rpm range was pretty good with the sweet spot being 60mph at about 2200-2300 rpms in 5th gear. I was only pushing maybe 100 hp out of the trooper and it did ok on everything but the long slow rise hills. A V6 with 4:56's and 31-33" should be a perfect freeway/offroad mix.

 ok, i just reread everything and i was mistaken. my runner came with 3.909 gears originaly. according to the calculator nathan posted it would run at 1964 RPM at 60 MPH. the 4.56 will give me 1988 RPM at 60 MPH which would be the closest to stock. 4.88 would give me 2128 RPM at 60 MPH. so you are right the 5.29 would be way too low. would the extra 164 rpm cause problems or would that be close enought to stock to be ok?

edit: fixed my math

33's are the biggest i think i will go on my rig. also for the forseeable future it will be my daily driver so need to keep it a tame on the road. i plan on puting an  arb locker in the rear. in the future i may go for a front locker as well but for now im just going to go for a rear locker.