the ultamate front axle??

[xDUMPTRUCKx]

troy i think you just need some thornbirds and your rig will be complete..........


i am currently on my junkyard 60 quest and boy is it a long one thus far.

ive had more luck with complete trucks than just the front axles.

you want the ultimate front axle on a budget? buy a 78/79 f2/350 rob it of the front axle and part out the rest.

i almost had a set of 60s off a 79 f350 in maine for $600, someone outbid me in the last 10 seconds and beat me by $10. shipping was going to be $315. man i was pissed.

 

[Goatman]

Buy a Warn 30 spline hub kit that comes with new hubs, rotors, stubs, and spindles. Not sure it is worth it. 'RUMOR' has it the spindles MAY not be as strong as standard Spicer spindles but the 5 x 5.5 Warn rotor is tons stronger than a standard Ford 5 x 5.5 rotor.

Yes, using the Warn 5 on 5.5 hub kit for the D30 (CJ version), which comes with chromo 30 spline stubs and 30 spline Warn hubs. The kit includes new spindles. To adapt it to a D44 knuckle a special bearing needs to be used, but Parts Mike has them and he knows what to do. The potential issue with the spindles is simply that they are a touch thinner and slightly shorter than D44 spindles, so the bearings are closer together. No one has ever had a problem with them, it's a totally hypothetical concern. On a D30 people run the crap out of them with no problems.

No such thing as a Warn rotor, the kit uses a CJ rotor, which is normal when the kit is used on a CJ but requires buying new rotors when used on an XJ, YJ, TJ style D30 but the rotor needs to be turned down slightly.

 

[NXJ]

I would take a set of Volvo portals over a 60 any day!

Anyone seen the pic of "Kid"-something's molested D30 R&P? That made up my mind.

 

[mattyg]

hp d44 with 3inch tubes 1/2 inch thick cut down to waggy specs knuckles turned to keep the cv shaft happy with lock out hubs
should be bullet proof behind(in front of) my 2.5L, 231 doubler,513s and 37s

 

[AzRick]

:dunno:
Havn't broke my 44.....yet!
Oh....maybe some other Rick?

Rick

I'm the Rick they are talking about. I stripped about 8 teeth of my D30 ring gear in JV last month. Funny....I think every year I go to JV, I end being the "example" of broken axles/stuff after the trip. The place kicks my ass.

Guess what, I'm gonna replace the R&P, and keep wheelin it. This is the first D30 that I've wheeled for a couple years (I'm on my third one.....bent the first two) that doesn't seem to be bent. I say this because my carrier didn't fall out of the diff when I took it apart this time. My other two housings wouldn't hold a preload on the carrier after lots of hard wheeling. The current axle is trussed, which the previous two weren't. I will be installing a HD diff cover to try and strengthen the pumpkin as well.

I wheel pretty much every weekend, sometimes both days. Thats a lot of 4.0 to 5.0 trails in a couple years. Plus, I like to haul ass to and from the trailer, which doesn't help with axle longevity.

I've always said the only 60 I would own is a ProRock, so I guess I'll keep wheelin the 30 for a while.

Rick

BTW....I'm running 35's and plan to stay with 35's.

 

[NXJ]

Picture of said trussing arrangement? In what way did your other axles bend, circumstances?

 

[AzRick]

Picture of said trussing arrangement? In what way did your other axles bend, circumstances?

I'm assuming what happened to me stemmed from a bent axle tube and/or housing deflection.

In addition to the carrier issues I mentioned before, I was having ARB problems as well. I couldn't get a set of O-rings on the carrier seal to last more than about a month. Also had air leakage from said o-rings when the axle was flexed up. Axle "twist" and housing deflection was causing wierd things to happen. Running a radius arm style 4 link without rubber bushings was contributing to the problem as well. I built a 3 link not long after building the truss, and also ditched the ARB for a lock right.

Again, I wheel A LOT. And I like to "get it". I'm hard on parts. Thats the circumstances

 

[hadfield4wd]

Yes, using the Warn 5 on 5.5 hub kit for the D30 (CJ version), which comes with chromo 30 spline stubs and 30 spline Warn hubs. The kit includes new spindles. To adapt it to a D44 knuckle a special bearing needs to be used, but Parts Mike has them and he knows what to do. The potential issue with the spindles is simply that they are a touch thinner and slightly shorter than D44 spindles, so the bearings are closer together. No one has ever had a problem with them, it's a totally hypothetical concern. On a D30 people run the crap out of them with no problems.

No such thing as a Warn rotor, the kit uses a CJ rotor, which is normal when the kit is used on a CJ but requires buying new rotors when used on an XJ, YJ, TJ style D30 but the rotor needs to be turned down slightly.

Thank you.

 

[Gary E]

So whats the opinion on the 6044 like Jeff is doing? Are Richards dana 50s still available for $500 mate that with a 44, 35 spline arb shorten and respline the 60 shafts. You could be around $1500-2000 without high steer. Yeah you got a funky lug pattern and weaker stubs but would this hold up to 4Ds? or would you start spitting stubs and pinions?

 

[wrecked]

Alot of you ugys are saying that the 44's up front are quite weak once you start to get bigger than a 35 on it. I agree and disagree at the same time. For the guys running big tires with a heavy foot then there is more of a chance at breakge.

However, I ran my Hp44 from a 79 ford f150/250(can't recall, came with a 9" out back) with some heavy arse Boggers as well as some 37" buckshots. Drove it daily, did a bundle of crawling and only broke one hub. THe axle was completely stock except for the 4.88's. I thought that was pretty good. Granted, I'm relatively new to the axle building thing.

I just picked up a HP44 and FF D60 as a pair, complete from a 3/4 ton ford for $450 delivered (which also included an extra set of doors) for my new build. I think I made out pretty well with that so I'm going to go ahead and just run them of course I'll beef them up a bit this time around. I think that for my area I should be plenty fine.

I suppose I could be like the guys around here and run 39.5 Pitbull Rockers on d30's!

-Kevin

 

[vetteboy]

My biggest problem with the Dana 30 was blowing up axleshaft u-joints, fully locked with 33" radial tires. Real Spicer 297x/760x joints. It would typically nuke the inner and stub shaft at the same time if I didn't catch it right away, and during the best example the shaft bound on itself with half a revolution and took out the ball joints too.

So for me, "upgrading" to a 44 would have been no improvement at all in u-joint or shaft strength, a downgrade in strength to lockouts vs. unit bearings, and marginal increase in ball joint strength. Certainly not enough to justify it in stock form, and I really didn't want to put a lot of money into something that would almost certainly be problematic down the line anyway (got 39.5s on it now).

So now it's got a 60 w/drive flanges, and we'll see how that goes.

 

[Goatman]

Alot of you ugys are saying that the 44's up front are quite weak once you start to get bigger than a 35 on it. I agree and disagree at the same time. For the guys running big tires with a heavy foot then there is more of a chance at breakge.

However, I ran my Hp44 from a 79 ford f150/250(can't recall, came with a 9" out back) with some heavy arse Boggers as well as some 37" buckshots. Drove it daily, did a bundle of crawling and only broke one hub. THe axle was completely stock except for the 4.88's. I thought that was pretty good. Granted, I'm relatively new to the axle building thing.

I just picked up a HP44 and FF D60 as a pair, complete from a 3/4 ton ford for $450 delivered (which also included an extra set of doors) for my new build. I think I made out pretty well with that so I'm going to go ahead and just run them of course I'll beef them up a bit this time around. I think that for my area I should be plenty fine.

I suppose I could be like the guys around here and run 39.5 Pitbull Rockers on d30's!

-Kevin

So much of it has to do with the type of terrain you wheel on. If there's some dirt and mud to slip on you can get a way with more. On the dry rock canyons some of us wheel on regularly, stock D30 and D44 Spicer shafts just don't hold up. There are too many ledges the tire goes up against, or getting the tire bound up in a rock or slight undercut, what we call a wedgie. A good example is one run we did on Outer Limits a couple of years ago. This was a small group of well set up rigs with experienced drivers, and there were six front shafts broken that day. All were Spicer shafts on 33" tires. No one running larger tires with alloy shafts broke anything that day.

 

[vetteboy]

If there's some dirt and mud to slip on you can get a way with more.

I'm not sure I agree totally with this. A lot of our stuff out here tends to get wet, with a lot of loose rocky surface over the bigger rocks. Sometimes it takes wheelspin, and while there are occasions where the tires will slip before breaking stuff, there's also occasions where you'll go from spinning to gripping very quickly, shock loading everything and blowing stuff up. Here's two examples of the typical terrain I end up running pretty often... (not my rig, i was photo'ing)

What would usually happen is I'd be trying to get up something, and the tires would start to break loose, so you'd sort of cut the wheel and try and hunt for some better traction, then it would catch and the u-joint would be at a bad angle and the party's over. My rig will have 182:1ish crawl when it's done but I doubt it'll get much use at that ratio in most of the stuff I run just because I won't have any wheelspeed.

It's pretty rare to see anyone out here with tires larger than 35-36 on a D44. The 609's are starting to be pretty popular but anything with the small u-joints just doesn't really hold up well.

 

[wrecked]

So much of it has to do with the type of terrain you wheel on. If there's some dirt and mud to slip on you can get a way with more. On the dry rock canyons some of us wheel on regularly, stock D30 and D44 Spicer shafts just don't hold up. There are too many ledges the tire goes up against, or getting the tire bound up in a rock or slight undercut, what we call a wedgie. A good example is one run we did on Outer Limits a couple of years ago. This was a small group of well set up rigs with experienced drivers, and there were six front shafts broken that day. All were Spicer shafts on 33" tires. No one running larger tires with alloy shafts broke anything that day.

I agree the terrain does make a big difference. I can see the "been dry for a long time" rocks are totally different then our "rock gardens with mud or moist dirt here and there".

Heres what I've been thinking for my build of my front 44. Alloy shafts, CTM joints, Longfield 300m if I can't get the CTM, Drive slugs with a spare set of lockouts if the slug breaks. From what I read, the CTM's should take care of the weak joints. And the Alloy shafts will help fring up the shaft strength. SLugs are stronger than locking hubs, right? What other kinds of thinks do I need to be looking into to make my 44 as strong as possible. I'm likely to not need the strength I'm not an aggressive driver, I do want to avoid breakage though.

-Kevin

 

[cracker]

Alot of you ugys are saying that the 44's up front are quite weak once you start to get bigger than a 35 on it. I agree and disagree at the same time. For the guys running big tires with a heavy foot then there is more of a chance at breakge.

However, I ran my Hp44 from a 79 ford f150/250(can't recall, came with a 9" out back) with some heavy arse Boggers as well as some 37" buckshots. Drove it daily, did a bundle of crawling and only broke one hub. THe axle was completely stock except for the 4.88's. I thought that was pretty good. Granted, I'm relatively new to the axle building thing.

I just picked up a HP44 and FF D60 as a pair, complete from a 3/4 ton ford for $450 delivered (which also included an extra set of doors) for my new build. I think I made out pretty well with that so I'm going to go ahead and just run them of course I'll beef them up a bit this time around. I think that for my area I should be plenty fine.

I suppose I could be like the guys around here and run 39.5 Pitbull Rockers on d30's!

-Kevin

That does not fly on the trails we run

This one I did in August

This one I did in Nov

I've broken about 5 hubs as well.

I don't think I am 'skinny pedal' heavy until I get pissed

I've been on the pro 44 side of the debate for several years. In fact, I've never ever even wheeled a dana 30 in an XJ (I swapped in a 44 as soon as I bought my first XJ). I think I was wrong. A 44 just doesn't give you enough strength where we need it. I am of the opinion now that the 44 should be skipped over. Build the 30 & once you've outgrown it than it's time for 60 stuff. A built & trussed 30 will hold up to anything a built 44 will. There's just not enough strength difference between the 2 to make it worth the work to swap IMO.

Matt

Amen Matt! Polish the turdy or go 60.

 

[vetteboy]

I agree the terrain does make a big difference. I can see the "been dry for a long time" rocks are totally different then our "rock gardens with mud or moist dirt here and there".

Heres what I've been thinking for my build of my front 44. Alloy shafts, CTM joints, Longfield 300m if I can't get the CTM, Drive slugs with a spare set of lockouts if the slug breaks. From what I read, the CTM's should take care of the weak joints. And the Alloy shafts will help fring up the shaft strength. SLugs are stronger than locking hubs, right? What other kinds of thinks do I need to be looking into to make my 44 as strong as possible. I'm likely to not need the strength I'm not an aggressive driver, I do want to avoid breakage though.

-Kevin

I think I missed what size tire you were running?

About every other trip I see a guy with a knuckle hanging off a D44 because the balljoints let go after a sidehill stop with 38s or so. Kinda makes me laugh now. Then there's the guy I helped fix a few months ago who broke a spindle off his 44...running 38" SXs I think.

With the amount of money you just described, having stupid un-upgradeable things break like I just mentioned has got to be a pain in the ass. Really makes me wonder why you wouldn't just go with a 60 the first time around, and lose all the weak links of a D44 in the process with stock hardware and easy-to-find parts.

 

[vetteboy]

This one I did in Nov

Impressive!

What did the hub / drive slug have to say about that?

Looks to me like that one was hurtin for some time before it actually gave up. Wallowed out splines in the hub maybe?

 

[hadfield4wd]

Goatman said it earlier about going 30 spline on the hubs. I'm thinking about it. hmm And also carry spare spindles etc.

 

[CartsXJ]

All I see is pics of broke shafts. Has anybody actually broken a spindle?

 

[cracker]

Impressive!

What did the hub / drive slug have to say about that?

Looks to me like that one was hurtin for some time before it actually gave up. Wallowed out splines in the hub maybe?

Hub survived in both cases but I retired it just in case. Hub looked 'ok' though.