old bronco d44 and 9" how hard to swap

[Big Red]

Farmer Matt has a tech article write up of the early bronco dana 44/ford 9" somewhere on this site. I got a pm from him with the link, but I think I deleted it. I also couldn't find the Members Tech Articles, but I know this writeup should be in there. The dana 44 eb axle is nice, but you have to deal with the drum brakes and small 260 u-joints stock and the ford 9" is a 28 spline unit. If you have some $ in your budget to change these things you have some nice axles. The front dana 44 just about bolts in, you just need to work with the radius arms and do a custom cross-member like a long arm to get it to work.

If you don't want to do that, you should think of starting with a waggy 80'+ dana 44 which is about stock width and weld on your coil mounts or heck run SOA in the front with leafs.

If you don't do that a full size rev dana 44/ford 9" is awesome and really strong, but wide.

 

[CW]

If you have an axle with cast mounts then radius arms are definately the easiest. If they are welded on radius arms are still the easiest but it's a lot easier to adapt a long arm setup. Making new brackets and using the d30 for measurments is the way to go. I wouldn't go with an EB axle, I am happy with my f-150 axles and they aren't that wide, plus the width is nice on off camber junk.

trails like this were a lot scarier with stock axles.

 

[Pete M]

For anyone worried about their Jeep being 'down' for too long, I wouldn't advise ANY axle swaps that aren't stock to stock. Even with the best planning, there are a TON of things that can go terribly wrong. Many of my plans needed to be changed on the fly and some items were simply impossible to fabricate before the truck started coming together. I *highly* recommend putting together a spreadsheet in eXcel for any project this complex. (the terms "easy" and "simple" are used reletive to other various axle swaps, not changing the oil or rotating the tires) It was a great help in keeping all the details straight. Unfortunately, I deleted tasks as I completed them and didn't have the foresight to keep a running tab of everything I did. I took lots pictures though so all is not lost.
Jeep on!
--Pete

P.S. I agree that the axles may seem quite wide on paper. In practice however, a set of extended flares should easily cover the rubber.

33x12.5 tires on 15x8 rims with ~4" of backspacing makes it about 80" of overall width