XJ Dana 44 Swap, gone wrong.

You have metal in the pinion troft and probably in the pinion bearings meaning that metal is grinding up and going inside your new carrier bearings which you can now toss in the trash and replace. Pull everything back out, including the pinion and axke shafts. Buy 2 cans of brake clean and clean the inside of that housing and axle tubes using rags and a long stick to push the rags through the tubes, make sure that housing is clean enough to eat out if it. Then reassemble, but this time check pinion preload, backlash and gear pattern. I would say that your gear set is toast too.
 
Renegade XJ said:
You have metal in the pinion troft and probably in the pinion bearings meaning that metal is grinding up and going inside your new carrier bearings which you can now toss in the trash and replace. Pull everything back out, including the pinion and axke shafts. Buy 2 cans of brake clean and clean the inside of that housing and axle tubes using rags and a long stick to push the rags through the tubes, make sure that housing is clean enough to eat out if it. Then reassemble, but this time check pinion preload, backlash and gear pattern. I would say that your gear set is toast too.
Click to expand...

Very good call but I already did that. I used nearly a flat of brake cleaner on that thing and pushed rags through both tubes 4 or 5 times. It was sparkling.
 
And do yourself a favor when you rebuild it and stick a small rare earth magnet inside the housing to collect the metal when you rebuild it. Works wonders to save internals and make the oil last longer.
 
agreed to the postings above...you need to get some axle grease "yellow mustard" and check your pattern. you can't just throw in new shims and bearings and call it done. the new bearings and shims will change the preload on the carrier as well as backlash. If I was you i'd remove the axle from the vehicle and put it on a work bench. Do a backlash check on the ring gear, and then check your pattern. a 10lb dead blow even for setting in the carrier is not need IMO you more than likely put to thick of a shim stack causing the bearings to have to much preload which will over heat the bearings. and if the backlash is to tight on the ring gear it will also give you the moan. caused by a hunting gear. on top of all of that I see that your tires are warn un evenly in the back not sure if this was the effect of the lock up on the highway but that will cause the LSD clutches to overheat which might have cause problems with your LSD however I doubt this is the reason behind the mysterious lockup.

responding to your break theory yes pad can over heat (depending on which pads you use) and stick to the drum causing a lockup, could have been another issue but my guess you have semi-metallic in the back drum pads not ceramics. heat with ceramic pads will cause this stick issue. you can measure the drum itself for being out of round, but unless you have the star adjust out all the way you'd more or less hear a scraping noise then an instantaneous lock up on the highway.

when the driveshaft is removed from the axle and you spin in neutral do you hear anything coming from the t-case/tranny?
 
Just for grins and giggles pull the cover off and see if you can find any sign of the pinion impacting the carrier--as in the pinion nut is loose and the pinion is floating.
 
UPDATE:
Finally had a moment to dive back into the XJ last night. Brakes were catching a lot. Tried to adjust them to no avail. Decided I would take the brakes off and check things out. A little dirty but no red flags. I then noticed it was still rather difficult to turn the axle shafts with the drums off. :dunno:
So I dove in further. Took the driveshaft apart/off the pinion yoke. Instantly everything was fixed. The tranny/t-case were rotating smoothing with the driveshaft, and the axle spun freely with no play. I did notice a lot of bearing and/or gear noise from the axle though, BUT no binding! :yelclap:
Looks like I need a slightly shorter driveshaft or perhaps I did the strap-to-ubolt mod wrong. At least I know what direction I'm heading now. I'll probably take the axle out of the truck and have all the bearings/seals refreshed at the local shop. Have them put a new u-bolt yoke on while it's there. Meanwhile I'll go ahead and find a NP231 and do a SYE setup. I think this will fix all my issues for the time being.
 
I'd consider new gears at the same time... yours may be junk by now if it's binding with the brake drums off. If they fix it right they'll be doing 95% of a gear setup job anyways, so if you're looking to improve your gearing, it'll probably end up being a $170-190 difference instead of paying 500+ for another set of gears, master install kit, labor, etc later.

Even if you don't decide on new gears, finding a good set of stock-ratio 44 used takeouts from someone else who regeared shouldn't be TOO hard, and they'd almost certainly be less FUBAR than yours. hypoid gears aren't supposed to bind during operation and the fact that they do it cold while you're turning it by hand after they locked up on the highway means they are almost certainly junk. Even if it was the bearings, they've probably been run at a funky loose/bad angled setup (resulting in the lockup) and... are almost certainly junk.
 
kastein said:
I'd consider new gears at the same time... yours may be junk by now if it's binding with the brake drums off. If they fix it right they'll be doing 95% of a gear setup job anyways, so if you're looking to improve your gearing, it'll probably end up being a $170-190 difference instead of paying 500+ for another set of gears, master install kit, labor, etc later.

Even if you don't decide on new gears, finding a good set of stock-ratio 44 used takeouts from someone else who regeared shouldn't be TOO hard, and they'd almost certainly be less FUBAR than yours. hypoid gears aren't supposed to bind during operation and the fact that they do it cold while you're turning it by hand after they locked up on the highway means they are almost certainly junk. Even if it was the bearings, they've probably been run at a funky loose/bad angled setup (resulting in the lockup) and... are almost certainly junk.
Click to expand...

Valid. At this point I've decided to extract the axle out of the truck and put the 35c back in. I'll clean and strip the axle, buy all new Timken bearings/seals, grab new gears for it, and just drop it off at my local shop to have it professionally done. (In other words, I give up)
 
I'll be quick as to not bog down this good thread. After being a NAXJA member for 10 years now and my second XJ, I am still amazed at the collaborative and polite culture of this site. I'm on a lot of forums: hunting, fishing, knives, guns, other jeep forums, you name it. NAXJA members almost always provide constructive comments, minimize the sarcastic criticisms, and don't make dumb recommendations like "you should have bought a TJ". Rudeness is the norm on a lot of other forums. This thread is a good example of all that goodness and NAXJA members helping each other out without making the OP feel like dog poop about his problem. I might get me a D44 now for the 90 beater XJ. Sorry to hijack. Nuff said.
 
Ok I have read through most of this and I am surprised nobody has really mentioned anything about the LSD being toast. I read another thread somewhere on here that had a guy with a factory Trac Loc LSD like the one I am assuming is in yours since you said it is all factory. But in this other thread the guy had the same thing happen to him, locked up on the highway. Turns out his Trac Loc was trashed and the clutches were gone. Seems like everything has possibly checked out good so that comes down to a Trac Loc rebuild. I picked up a Trac Loc for free for my Dana 44 I am rebuilding. I looked into rebuild kits and you can pick up two different clutch kits. One is the standard clutch kit and then one is a more aggressive clutch kit that they call a Power Loc kit. I think I might opt for the Power Loc kit.
 
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