Solid Axle Swap BS Thread

Alrighty

 

It's pretty cool and I wouldn't want to see it with it's lights on behind me! Cuz I wouldn't be able to get away haha

 

I like this photo.



And this...

 

I do too. So now theres two of us that like these photos

 

So now this is a picture thread eh.

 

I get the joy of manually locking big fat warn hubs on my Dana 60 when I hit the trail. I even had a ford owning friend get down on his hands & knees & kiss one of them after I pulled his bronco out. I pulled his bumper off too.

 

Thats how you show em whatsup

This is kind of random but is it possible to make a dana 44 or toyota solid axle to get auto locking hubs? Im just a curious lad

 

After seeing alove's SAS I think I definitely want to go 3-link. Say I want to stick a D44 under there first and not wheel it TOO crazy, so I can maintain a reasonable WMS/WMS width and still DD or drive it to the trails if I want to. When the time came to go all out and bump up to a D60, would everything have to be torn out (links, mounts, shock hoops, ect.) or would it be as simple as welding new mounts to the D60 and bolting it up?

 

I know forsure the D44 can. They are called drive flanges or drive slugs. Stronger than manual hubs for sure...

Not too familar with toyota though.

Best bet would be to run the grand wagoneer axle, it's perfect width for our trucks.

Pretty much you could get all the brackets made on the D60 afterwards and bolt it in, in a perfect world... Some adjustments may need to be made however.. Axle is alot wider, sometimes that may change the length of things.

 

I posted this in the fabrication thread with no luck, so i figure this is the next best place to ask. My offroad trailer has outgrown it's leaf spring suspension. I'm gathering parts to build a 4-link setup. the last thing i need are the rod ends. I've used ruff stuff and balistic fab before, and like both, but have never ordered eithers rod ends. just wondering if anyone had an opinion on one versus the other, or even a third option that you like.

 

Both are quality rod ends IMO. Honestly can't say which is best. From what I read you can't go wrong with either of them. If you are pushed to get them sooner, I would call them, Ballistic likes to run out of parts and restock slower lol. Ruffstuff usually isn't out of stock.

 

Good to know. i've usually ordered pretty common parts from both, so stock hasn't been an issue, but with so many different rod end sizes and adaptors, i could see that coming into play. I'm not really in a hurry, and they both seem to be priced identically. may just wait till i get one of those 15% off emails and buy them then

Thanks for the info!

 

Yeah that would be great, sounds like wagoneers are relatively inexpensive and easy to find. That's probably the route I'll go. Live, learn, and then upgrade!

 

I can't complain about my 44 yet. I still would prefer a D60, having the sense of security of breaking hardly ever. D44 works good if you drive well. Now if only I kept up on the maintenance of it

 

Something I don't understand... isn't a good thing to have a lot of weight underneath (suspension, axles, wheels/tires) so you can keep the COG as low as possible? Why are there aluminum housings, wheels, ect? What's the benefit?

 

You don't want any weight at your tires, if they made tires that weight 0 #, no one would break anything As for the housing, not sure.. I would still think you want weight of the axle to keep the COG lower in addition to a lower truck..

Low truck = not always as good, one good reason SA is better than IFS. SA sits so high, it doesn't get hung up.

Very true, but if you set-up your CO's correctly, you can make a linked taco work on road better than any IFS rig, just way harder and more money haha

 

It's never that simple. Some of the brackets will work and some won't. The shock hoops may work depending on what type of d 60 your using and some won't. My question would be.... Why waste the money on A Dana 44 when you will ultimately go to a 60? If your talking about it now it will most likely happen so don't waste your time and hard earned money and just go straight to the 60.

 

Hell, I dunno... I guess my line of thinking was to 'learn' on a D44 and still be able to DD it if I need/want to. Plus I could still keep my rear axle and bring the initial costs down.

 

There is no reason you can't keep your axle with a Dana 60 up front. Your rear axle is stronger than a 44 anyway. Also, when you start to build these things there is always going to be a compromise of something. I kept my COG low by more unsprung weight. I'm not driving a sports car. If I'm going to race it I want as much strength in the drive train and axle's which in most case's means more weight and I'll save the weight in the rest of the truck. But since 99.9% of us here are not racing our trucks, it would take years to see the savings in gas mileage savings to mean anything by saving the weight in sprung suspension parts.

Get the 60 and be happy. You can DD it with no issues just as much as you can a 44. I DD mine for an entire summer on 40" tires.