I bought an 86 Sammi. Ive added a spring over, 3" body lift, longer shackles and other mods to clear 33"s and handle the way I want. Now I need to gear down. Im a cheap bastard. Ive seen a couple of different transfercase kits advertised, the cheapest one was around $400. Are there others? Im not a rock crawler but I do a little of every type of terrian so I need to gear down. I heard you could weld something in the t-case and make it lower, is that true? Remember, IM POOR. Poor man fixes are fine with me!! I have 2 stock cases to play with or use as cores. Any help is appreciated.

your only hope is to find a sj -410 t-case for cheap,i know there rare, but you might luck out like i did and find one {the right one}there were 2 variants....but if you can find the right one you can send the spur gears to trail tuff {1 413 gear and 1 410 gear} and bret will be glad to lop chop slice dice and weld you up a 4.16 to 1 t-case gear,for just 1 one hundered dollar bill if i remember correctly....the you still have to install this in your t-case now since youve managed to jump thru all these hoops to save 199.00 bucks you get to put that money into bearings seals and gaskets not to mention paying someone to set it all up...probably you would get the most bang for your buck would be the hybred axel houseing that way you can go to the junk yard and buy both "axels"from a kick/tracker {these are not rare}there are 2 flavores automatic/4.62 to 1 stick shift 5.12 to 1....by gearing the axels you can at least make 31-33 inch tyres look "stock"to the engine yes this will cost 4-5 hundered bucks but if you break a diff you can go get one at allmost any junkyard and the gears have already been set up at the factory no skill involved unbolt bad one throw away bolt in new one drive away...try to find a 4 to 1 t-case inthe junk yard hope this helps............rabidray

tell me how this body lift stuff works i wana put a sj 410 body on a 413 frame wirh a 1.6 and ill need the body lift,all ive ever done was spoas so this is new to me..........rabidray

There are a couple options for gearing.

You can run a tcase with 4.16:1 (GRS-1), 4.89:1 (GRS-2), 5.8:1, or 6.1:1. You can get into a 4.16 case for about $400 for the gears. A 4.89 will cost you about $830 for the gears. A 6.1 will cost you about $900 for the gears or $1200 complete.

The 6.1 with stock r/p's works well with 33's. The 4.16 works well with 31's.

You can also plan on replacing the ring and pinions. If you have gears installed, you should look into lockers at the same time so you're not installing stuff twice.

You're best bang for the buck will be crawler gears though. I'm currently running the 4.16:1 with 3.73 (stock) r/p's and 31's. This isn't low enough for me though. I'm dropping in some used 5.43's and jumping to 34x10.5's myself.

hey the guy said he is a cheap bastard ,and you already know that the 4.16,s arent enough by them selves,just put the 5.12 gears in the axels{5.12 is also the most common}just be prepared to run 33 inch and bigger tyres,i tied it on 31,s and was turning like 4700 rpm to run like 50 mph 33 might fix some of that but im not shyre how much.......rabidray

Originally posted by 72zebra
I bought an 86 Sammi.... 3"body lift... 33"s ....Im a cheap bastard. ...Poor man fixes are fine with me


Do a search for sidekick gears. You can use the front chunk out of a Sidekick/Tracker in both the front & rear of a Samurai housings - just gotta swap the side gears.

Search & you'll see - best bang for the buck for you. Don't be afraid to do it yourself.

I went with the 4.16 gears from Clamini.
Probably the single best modification I've done.

On road is great, off road is a whole lot safer with lower gears.
Used to crazy with the skinny pedal to get up stuff. Got myself in a bad way a few times. Now I ease on up. Still wishing I had the $$ to go with the 6:1 gears. Probably will sometime after I go to 33s.

The swap is easy if you have a shop press and bearing separators.
RRO has gears only cheaper, but I figured with 110 k miles I might as well change the bearings and other hardware supplied.
The Calmini kit was a better kit for the money.