Who here has ran with a welded or spooled 7.5" rear?

In an effort to keep my project on a low budget and keep wheeling i'm going to weld up the spider gears in my rear 7.5". Its a 5lug 2wd on 31's, i'm going to keep it on 31's to keep the stress levels low on the ball joints and rear axle shafts. Plus i don't want to have to re-gear.

So my question is, how did the rear axle shafts fair to a welded 3rd? Did it cause any pre-mature ball joint failure with the added stress that a fully locked rear puts on steering?

I ran a welded toyota 8" in the rear of my bronco II with 35's on stock shafts and it crawled fine but this 7.5 is a whole different animal.

 

quite a bit of my friends have welded rears and they havent had any problems besides going through tires faster

 

welded the 7.5"? I think i only have 27spline shafts(from what i've read, i haven't pulled shafts yet) so that worries me...

 

I've seen yota's do crazy shit on stock running gear. I wouldn't worry at all. My buddy was running a welded 3rd with 5.29's and 40's. He grenaded the transfer case doing burnouts in the burger king parking lot. Axles, and driveline didn't even shudder. So to answer your question, you should be fine on 31's. But it's like anything, if you run it hard it'll break. If I was you I wouldn't even sweat.