Problems continue, but I refuse to give up

As I mentioned in the audio post, the transmission on the Beast was nearing the end of its life.  A few weeks after that post I took it to the shop and had them check it out.  They said that the bearings and syncros had completely turned into powder and both the shafts were broken.  He was amazed the transmission still worked.  He said the damage inside was so extensive that he'd have to scrap that transmission, but had a source on a replacement.  I had them go ahead and do the swap.  It was expensive, but at least I have a running truck.  It was nice and quiet also compared to that constant droning noise the old one made.

Shortly after getting the transmission fixed, the noise from the driver's side front wheel was getting worse.  It seemed that every time I got up to around 30mph it would start making that whizzing noise and shudder when I slowed back down to around 20mph.  I figured this had to be the 4x4 hub since I'd replaced basically everything else on the truck.  To test my theory I removed the spring and brake for the 4x4 hub (this disabled the hub's ability to engage and effectively made the truck RWD).  Sure enough, the noise stopped.  I drove it like this for around 300 miles.  During this time the environmental controls broke -_-  Luckily I had a spare set of those sitting around I'd bought before for real cheap to have as a spare.  I haven't replaced this yet as it's pretty much always cold now so it's fine stuck where it is.  Temperature and fan speed still work, it's just stuck circulating air inside the cab and only moves between head/feet and feet/defrost rather than all the selections it should have.  The replacement panel is from a newer truck but should work fine.  I took the truck on a deer hunting trip in TN and did some off roading.  Even in RWD it did awesome.  I never got stuck and it crossed small creeks and very rough terrain with ease.  I drove it about 150 miles that day and didn't have any trouble at all :)

woohoo!

On my way to work one morning, the speedometer dropped to 0 and the odometer stopped counting.  From asking the guys on the forum, this is most likely the speedometer cable.  I haven't had a chance to look into this yet.

The truck sat for several weeks not being used because of holiday travel and a lot of long-range trips for work.  The Yaris gets such better mileage and is just easier to control at high speeds I drive it exclusively for lengthy trips.  It's also more comfortable.

I got a set of Warn Premium manual locking hubs for Xmas :)  My parents got them for me and I had to wait a little while to get some time to install them, but last night I put the truck in the garage and went at it.  The instructions are about as clear as the TN river, but with the help of a youtube video I got them installed correctly.  I haven't had a chance to test them yet, but they switch between lock and unlock with ease.  They seem to be quality pieces.  My only complaint is that the studs it comes with aren't grade 8.  I easily broke one of them off :/  I need to redo the passenger side hub anyway because I didn't do it right, it works but just isn't as clean as I like and needs to have that stud replaced.  I actually have some pictures of this haha.

Driver's side

Passenger side, note the broken stud

All the greasy parts removed from the automatic hubs were placed in bags with the respective hub and put into the Warn box.  I'm not sure if I want to keep these or sell them.  They could be rebuilt if someone had the parts, I was just unable to find them.  I'm going to update the to-do list with the new problems, but hopefully they will be pretty easy to fix.  It seems like every time I get something working something else breaks.