Introduction
Inchworm Rock Walkin' Gear
What the Gear Fairy left at my shop door
Although they are working on some for the future, at present Inchworm does not supply any installation instructions with Lefty. I benefited materially from Jon's (BellyDoc) PM'ed installation notes and several Inchworm Lefty threads here on the forum, and would like to pass on what I learned in my install for future owners and modifiers.
Installing a Lefty is not difficult from a purely mechanical point of view, but there are some considerations you should make in choosing to install one. Even though Lefty is based on an earlier Toyota geared transfer case and is very robust and well-made, it is not stock and it will need a little thought - it is not a plug 'n play kind of mod. Although a popular mod, it is still (2008 when this was written) somewhat in the development and learning curve stages, as Jim Christiansen, the owner of Inchworm will willingly tell you. Also, you must make some modifications to your existing stock transmission tail housing, shift lever, and wiring harness to install Lefty. These modifications would make it somewhat inconvenient (but not impossible) to remove Lefty and re-install the stock transfer case if desired at a later date.
My installation as documented is for an
automatic transmission-equipped 2007 FJ Cruiser. Installation for a manual transmission would differ in some details which for obvious reasons will not be covered in this write-up. If your are installing Lefty on a manual transmission, be sure to consult Inchworm and possibly other forum members with Lefties on manual transmissions for important differences, but the overall mechanics of the job will be essentially the same.
If you are an experienced mechanic you could complete this job in one day, but for most people I recommend planning on two days: take your time, do it right, don't get too tired, and most of all have fun!
Due to forum limits on the length of a single post, these installation instructions will be broken up into several different but subsequent and contiguous posts, hopefully in a logical manner that will be obvious to the installer.
A final note: I did not stop and take pictures of every step of the procedure, as I did mine completely by myself. Some of these pictures were taken after the install was completed; some steps described will have no photos at all - sorry, I did the best I could without taking an extra few days to install the thing with complete photographs. Also, I do not have Photoshop skills so there are no circles and arrows to help make the photo explanations more clear. I hope that this write-up will be helpful to those installing a Lefty or considering doing so, but no warranties as to perfect accuracy of the instructions are expressed or implied.
