I run 35s on a d35, along with a lot of people in my area I wheel with and in my jeep club. Locked and open, and some of them have been running it for years without any issues. I bag my jeep pretty hard, especially in the snow.. no issues so far.
Yes, granted some d35's will blow up instantly..but from my experience so far, its fine. As long as you know its a weak spot, then you will be ok.
Dont be an idiot and your fine.
Yeah..there is a lot of haters but you need to talk to someone running the setup (beyond me)..not a bunch of guys that have read it on the internet.
another d35 lover...
The spiders blow up, the axle housing is weak, the carrier is weak, the ring gear and pinion are tiny, the shafts suck, if a shaft blows you will be watching your tire roll away from you and trying to figure out how to put your brakes back together after getting the tire back.
I know of people who have broken d35s on p215s and 32s. I personally know people who have blown them on 225s. Another guy who has blown the spiders up driving it on the street twice with 33s on it, open. These axles just plain suck, why do people try to back them up and say it'll be just fine?
Ive seen plenty of people running 35's on a C8.25 axle. THERE everywhere. For some reason even the 27 spline 8.25's seem to hold up better then the 27 spline 35's.
I run 33's on my dads TJ D35 (I drive it when the XJ is down) and im pretty sure the spiders are pretty ground up. In an XJ there is really no excuse for running a crappy rear end because its so easy to install an axle under leaf springs.
The 8.25, even in 27 spline flavor, has a stronger housing, ring/pinion, spiders, and carrier than the d35, so it puts up with abuse better. At worst you will break a shaft wheeling, instead of having the spiders or carrier/ring and pinion just barf parts everywhere on the street.
I still have a d35 in my MJ, but it is because it is SUA, I haven't welded the perches onto the 8.25 I am installing in it, and I'm doing a 4wd swap and changing the driveshaft length at the same time. Gotta set aside some pretty significant time for that, and I'm real busy right now. It is starting to make some real bad noises so I hope to get this done soonish.
There is NO EXCUSE for running a d35 on an XJ:
* there are much better axles (27/29 spline 8.25s, dana 44s) that bolt right in, so no real fab is required. Prices are usually under 200 dollars at the junkyard. The longest part of the project is getting it out from under the junker in the yard, and bleeding the brakes when you are done.
* if you regeared it already :twak: why the hell did you do that? Now you have stockaxle syndrome and feel like you should defend and further upgrade your turd of an axle instead of dropping an extra hundred bucks on a better axle before gearing/locking (see also "throwing good money after bad"), which actually probably will get you a discount from the guy installing the gears because doing it to an axle on a bench is much easier than doing it to an axle under a jeep.
* you are a rolling ticking timebomb until you get a better axle. It will be "just fine" according to every other guy who has dumped money on his d35 until they blow theirs up, at which point they usually become an anti-d35 type.
* spending hours doing a trail fix on a crappy axle to limp it off the trail so you can fix it right is not my idea of a good time.
