For fear of breaking my factory steering arm, due to my long travel front suspension, I went in search of a method for implementing crossover steering on my truck.

There are really two pieces to the crossover steering puzzle:

1 - Which steering box and pitman arm to use
2 - How to attach the draglink to the passenger side steering knuckle.

This steering arm, designed for a Toyota Land Cruiser, also fits Toyota mini-truck knuckles since they both have the same knuckle design to a great degree. Fabtech was able to drill the tapered holes for the tie rod ends for the draglink and tie rod at the same degree of taper as mini-truck tie rod ends. This allowed me to avoid having mis-matched tie rod ends.

There are many different Power Steering options available for this swap, a few of which are: '67 Lincoln Continental, '69-79 2WD Ford F-150, Toyota IFS, 2WD Nissan truck. All of these options have problems associated with them, either with availability (Lincoln), size (F-150), or the problem of mating the pitman arm to the draglink (Nissan and IFS boxes). An IH Scout or FJ60 Land Cruiser box could possibly also be used, if it were converted to work so that the pitman pointed towards the rear of the vehicle instead of the front.

Above is a photo of the IFS steering box and how it is mounted. I used 3/4" tube and I believe 7/16" bolts, they fit quit snug inside the 3/4" tube that is welded in the frame to prevent the frame from collapsing under the stress of the bolts holding the P/S box.

Quite some time has gone by since I first implemented crossover steering and the only problem I've had to date was my draglink failing on its' first outing. I had used a stock Toyota mini-truck tie rod and it failed under use. I had greatly underestimated the force exerted on a draglink by the power steering. On the trail it was temporarily repaired with a piece of 1x1x1/4" angle iron which is still in use to this day. I haven't replaced it with a stronger draglink due to reports of problems from a friend who duplicated my method. He has had problems with the part that mates the draglink to the male stud on the end of the IFS pitman.

His problems with the IFS relay rod piece failing and my not liking having such a custom, uncommon, piece on my truck lead me to research other pitman arm choices. After much research and lots of help from Scott Tate at Sterling-McCall Lexus, I found that an FJ60 pitman arm will fit the IFS steering box and has a hole for a tie rod end. Unfortunately, it is a metric hole. I was able to have the FJ60 pitman reamed for an american taper tie rod end and made a draglink out of 1-1/8" DOM tubing threaded 11/16-18 on both ends since I was also able to find an american taper tie rod end that fit the metric taper of my Fabtech steering arms' draglink hole to near perfection. This avoided the extra cost of having that hole drilled for an american taper also.

The above photo is a comparison of the IFS pitman (top) which I orginally used for a short period of time and the FJ60 pitman (bottom) that I ended up using. This pitman is available from your local Toyota or if you're a TLCA member you can get a 25% discount on Toyota parts from Sterling-McCall Lexus/Toyota which can be reached at (800) 256-6225. Be sure to ask for Scott Tate and tell him Jack recommended you. He really knows his parts!

There are many other methods of implementing crossover steering on a Toyota truck but I chose the method I did for safety and reliability. I have absolutely no fear of the Fabtech arm failing under even the most extreme of uses.

I'll list a few of the other ideas I've heard of:

I've heard of others flipping a passenger side steering arm and bolting it to the existing steering arm and attaching the draglink to that. I've heard of others making or having made different types of custom arms that they bolt on top of the pass. side knuckle. Both of these methods, I feel place to much stress on the four studs holding the steering arms to the knuckle ....... a possible recipe for disaster.

Others I've heard of have swapped the right & left tie rod ends and have run their draglink down to the hole in the tie rod end that was meant for the steering stabilizer. There are two drawbacks to this method. First, it places a great deal of stress on the tie rod end, that wasn't designed to handle that much stress. Second, due to the angle on the draglink, it induces a great deal of bump steer.

This is not to say that there aren't persons out there who have implemented any of these other designs and have not had excellent luck with them. Simply put, the steering of my truck is not a part that I want to have any doubts in.

Happy Wheelin'
Jack