XJ axle swap

[HardKorTJ]

well after a good beating , and the xj spending the night in the woods, put a custom trac bar mount on the axle and drove it out.....


i figured i might as well put some bigger axles in it after seeing the damage.




Picked up a Dana70 and a Dana 44 both 8 lug, in the front i will be using the Chev GM10 bolt outters for the better brakes.



so out with the old crap , that served well.




Dana 70 all cleaned up



put under the rig, with shock mounts moved up ( i plan on shaving the pumpkin when the new leafs and shackels go in.


all in and dosent stick out that much. the 70 is 64 1/4 wms-wms and the 44 is 67 1/4 wms-wms so that turned out good, the rims on it are 16x8 and the tires on it now are 35's but going with 38's after the body mods.





Now time for the front, cut the coil buckets off and made new longarms and brackets.






cleaned up the 44



Started putting the brackets on and setting up the 3 Link



Then test fit in the jeep


Now on to the Trac bar mount. this is what i started with

ebeything is made out of 1/4




going to finish up welding the longarms and put the gears in the front tomorrow and prob build a front drive shaft.

[T-Dogg]

Holly Xj's,,, thats some awsome work there man.

Going to be a sweet ride when your done.
Hope to catch ya on a trail s ometime.

Da
Dogg

[iwonajeep]

bout time you got rollin on that thing

[HardKorTJ]

jeeze I know! Lol if its nice out tomorrow it should be together ....well - the tie rod and draglink will have to be made. I hope I still have .120 DOM layin around.

[HardKorTJ]

got the longarms all welded up and test fited, will paint em tomorrow night. The LP 44 pinion angle is not looking that good sooooo I'm on the hunt for a HP 44 or 60

[Creepy]

did you consider turning the knuckles? basically free, and solves caster and pinion angle in one shot.

[HardKorTJ]

i was thinkin about that Jan, but the way it looks for the front ds to clear the crossmember and have a good angle on it would be to rotate the front diff and then the cover would have a pretty good angle downward to the ground.

[Creepy]

Yeah. Make a super-beef cover?

I sold a HP D44 to Johnniemac down in Cape Breton, i think he's clearing house, it might be for sale again. it was the heavy duty leaf sprung model with 1/2" axle tubes, 3/4T, 8 bolt, high steer knuckles, etc.

[HardKorTJ]

hmmm intresting, ill have to pm him. Lol Alan said the same thing, build a heavy cover and put the fill plug higher.

[Creepy]

If you go the fat cover route, I have 3/8" D44 diff rings avail.

The D70 looks right at home in there. Its not too wide at all.

[HardKorTJ]

the 70 is an odd 64 1/4 wide ...came out of a 79 F250 2wd ...found it a a friends wood mill lol I think I'm going to be going to look for a HP44 it would be so easy to get the angle right. But making a cover outta all 3/8 would be badass.

[HardKorTJ]

Well not that Jam is almost here its time to build a front axle, i started it on saturday, cut the C's off and pressed out the tubes, i had Alan press out the axle tubes and set up the gears (locker was already installed)

old axle shafts off Tracys floor

One tube pressed in to the C and the Balistic fab brackets welded up

one tube in the center section

first test fit

threw the knuckels on

had Alan tap the pass side knuckel for high steering.

new hubs

upper arm mount


threw it in the jeep lastnigth

[HardKorTJ]

Done and working

[Creepy]

Congrats on getting it all together.

I see a couple of things not quite right tho. This gonna be driven on the road? My comments won't matter much if its a woods only rig. Except you lost a ton of clearance you could have had. Maybe its just to get it rolling....

The steering geometery is messed up. The lower trac mount is too low, the trac and draglink should be on the same angle. You could have made a raised trac mount instead of the ballistic 'one fits all' bracket for D30's. that mount needs to be like 6" higher to match your draglink angle. She's gonna bumpsteer.

'Severe' single shear bolts on the tierod. What is with the big spacers? Get those spacers out of there, and flip the tierod to the top of the knuckles. you would have been best off to make two knuckle steer arms, and put the tierod up there with the draglink, again 6" higher.

i did a shingle shear tie rod on my CJ with 38's, ran grd8 1"diameter bolts thru 6" of tube, as close to the parent material as possible (short joint flex spacers), it was fine. i'm not just baggin on single shear.....but you gotta beef it as best you can when taking shortcuts.

There is only 1" of knuckle there, with the forces down 2" lower...I predict its gonna be a bolt breaker. how big are the bolts? Look like 3/4"?

The fab work looks good, really good, but the engineering is not right.

[justajeep]

I think he still plans to use 1 ton TRE's, I didn't have time before Jam to do the threading.

With a raised bracket on the axle end of the track bar, should be able to build a simple straight track bar with hiem joints on the ends.