Dana 35 to 8.25-Eagle

[XJTripp]

Eagle,
I've got an 89 with the Dana 35, 2-3" AAL lift and an AW-4 and have been thinking about a lock-right, but now it occurs to me that an 8.25 might be the right thing to do. I plan to limit tires to 31 in the field and 235 when in daily driver mode. With the existing lift, will a late model 8.25 bolt in without cutting the drive shaft? Could I simply swap the driveshaft from the donor- is that necessary? Do you think the 8.25 spring perches, brakes etc. would work without modifying?.
I saw a previous response by you that said the driveshaft of the 35 in a1987 is 1/2" to 5/8" longer than the 8.25 and thought the lift might make up for this and make it work.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Eagle]

It should work. The spring percehes and everything will line up and it will bolt right in. Your '89 axle has 1.75" x 10" brakes and the 8.25 will have 2.5" x 9" brakes, but all XJ rear brakes suck anyway, so that's a wash IMHO.

The only question is the driveshaft. You can certainly run the shaft from the donor -- in fact, we took an '87 shaft and put it into the '95 that lost its drive shaft. He was running it with a 3" lift and I haven't heard of any problems, and that should effectively duplicate your setup after the axle swap. I would just check it by having a couple or three hefty assistants sit on the back to compress the springs and make sure the slip yoke isn't hitting the end of it's travel before you hit the rear spring bump stops.

 

[Wayne Sihler]

You will need larger U bolts.The 8.25 housing is larger in Diam. 3" comes to mind.
Wayne

 

[XJTripp]

Thanks

Thanks guys - I'm thinking about obtaining an 8.25 from the junkyard, putting a detroit in it and then swap it in. It should make it easy to do the setup on my on time with no pressure- since this is my daily driver.