My experience with the Dana 44 wagoneer swap

Build thread for the truck is on my profile:


I wanted to do a little write up on the wagoneer dana 44 that many guys like myself have/are planning on swapping into their rigs based on the last 8 months of my experience to hopefully lead you in the right direction.

To begin my trucks a 2001 Toyota Tacoma, 3.4 double cab, passenger drop Dana 44, ruf leaf springs on 37x 12.5. 4.10 gears. R1fa transfer case. It’s my daily driver and I wheel the thing hard.

After these breakages I installed these parts and seem to be having better luck:
-Dana spice u-joints with full circlips
-Yukon chromo long and stub shafts
-Yukon chromo spool
-Moog grease-able ball joints


I’ve had 3 major breakages on the trail, all high wheel speed and deep snow.

1. The first was my spider gears exploding (see pictures) due to being unlocked and high wheel speed. If you’re going to swap this axle into your truck do not run with open gears in the front, lock it straight away, whether that’s a spool, mechanical or selectable is up to you. The spider gears are a weak point in these axles, they heat up and start welding themselves to the housing. So just be aware of that.

2. I had a lower ball joint fail while going fast in the snow and catching a ditch, cause both the king shaft and the stub shaft to break on the way down. Whether that’s dues to lack of preventative maintenance or bad aftermarket parts from the previous owner is debatable. But if you’re swapping this in just do yourself a Favour and replace all of the ball joints. It’s an expensive and avoidable break.

3. I had a chromo shaft and stub shaft break due to u-joint failure. I determined the cause of this to be the c-clips that hold the u-joints in place come out. To remedy this Yukon and a few other companies make full circlips for the Dana spicer u-joints (you need aftermarket shafts to run them). I highly recommend doing so.

After doing those things this axle has been reliable, the reason I went with the Dana 44 is because of the narrow track width ground clearance. That being said if I was to do it all over again I would probably choose a 60 series or 80 series land cruiser axle. We’ll see how reliable it is after these upgrades now.

Take this for what it is, it’s just my personal experience.

 

Downfall of a 60 axle is that it uses mini outers but have a 9.5 centered

Benefit of an 80 axle is that the outers are beefy but have an 8" centered, but HP

Built a hybrid, 80 outers with 9.5 center?


Your 44 should have no issue with 37s. I know folks who put money into their 44 and run 40s without breaking. But everything is chromo and ctm joint

 

Yeah I agree, to be honest the Toyota 8”
Centres are pretty stout. I haven’t seen many people have problems with them unless they’re high horsepower rigs. I’d have to look into a hybrid. Rcvs seem to be the answer but at 3000$ it’s hard to swallow

 

This is what I'm doing right now. Fj60 rear housing and Fj80 shafts and knuckles, mini truck ifs hubs, 14wa calipers, and gx470 rotors. I'm also taking a SF fj80 rear housing and making a centered FF out of it. Axles should be 64.5" +/- for the front and 63.5" for the rear.

 

Slightly confused....

So you're building a 9.5 centered using the 60 centered section housing and length it to the 80 series front wms to use the inners and knuckles, that I get. When you say "ifs hub" I hope you're referring to the SA locking hubs and not the actual ifs hub because you won't be able to use the ifs hub in place of the 80 hub of you're running 80 outers. Both are differently designed. Also, ifs locking hub are 27s as the SA locking hub are 30s. If your referring to the locking hub, you'll need a set from a SA. Only difference between the SA locking hub and fj80 locking hub is the 4 notch on the fj80 hub, which will not affect anything.

 

IFS hub (left) vs 80 hub (right)

 

Sorry that post wasn't a very clear thought lol.

Rear axle build: 91-92 semi float fj80 rear axle housings is wide enough to center the diff with full float outers to make 63.5" wms (stock). Clean the housing up and weld on spindles and perches. Buy nitro cut to length fj80 full float rear shafts. Bam! Centered rear 9.5 full float axle.

Front axle build: fj60 9.5 semi float rear axle housing has enough tube to use stock fj80 front axle shafts and knuckles. Then, using a mini truck sfa spindle and ifs hub body, I'm doing the big brake kit with 14wa calipers and gx470 rotors. Then to top it all off, I have sfa locking hubs.

The ifs hub swap nets about an inch or so in wms over the stock fj80 wms at 63.5" making it 64.5 wms give or take. Hope that clears that up for you.

 

I'm still confused....
You won't be able to use 80 knuckles with sfa spindle, the mounting pattern is different. If you're referring to using the 80 knuckle ball with sfa knuckles, I doubt it'll work as the 80 ball are much larger in size.

I understand the portion of running ifs hub with sfa knuckle to net ~3" extra track width.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

 

I recalled mating a sfa spindle to the lc80 knuckles and the mounting bolt are different. Unless you re-drilled the sfa spindle?

 

I was told that the sfa spindles bolt up, but if they don't like you suggest, then I'll drill them to the pattern and bolt them on anyway.

The ifs hub swap only nets 3" when replacing a mini truck hub. Ifs vs fj80 it's only around an inch.

I'll do an axle write up when I get them finished. I'm working on the rear right now and hopefully going to start the front in a few weeks.

 

I was going to do what ty was with using an fj60 rear and slap some knuckle balls on it, but I flipped an fj60 front axle instead. Would I flip
it again, probably not. I saw the mini truck outers as a plus on the fj60 front as you don't have to pay the fj80 tax for some marginal extra strength. I have seen far more people blow up thirds than mini truck outers in my wheeling group.

If I HAD to do it all over I would have went straight to a d60, toyota steering angle sucks dong.

 

Bolts right up

 

I'll be damn...

How are you going to incorporate high steer or will you be running slee setup?

 

I'm trying to get hellfire's, but if I can't, I'm going to buy a super duty weld on kit. If I swap the knuckles L<>R I can use the brake mounting ears as lateral support for the high steer. Also I'm going to double sheet it with the stock arms.

 

HF will be a long wait. There's a waiting list that are months and months out.

 

I know. I'm 60 on that list right now. There might be a chance

 

There's always a chance. I know someone that's been waiting since summer of 2020, IDK what number he's at but I think @Pdugan6 is number 40 something on the waiting list.

60 potential buyer @ $1050 a pop = $63,000. I would venture to say their profit is probably +/-50%, which is still a pretty darn good. I'm not sure why they don't run 30 pair per production and push them out faster. HF have always been in demand when they acquired them. I bought mine a few years ago and had to wait as well.

 

They run 50 at a time from what I heard. The last batch had a lot of casting flaws and then covid hit and that really messed things up. I was on the list like 4 years ago but idk what happened.

 

Highly doubt they do a qty of 50 per production run. When I bought mine, I was told 10 pair per run and they typically have maybe 2 to 3 spare that are not spoken for.

BTW, my buddy who's been on the list since July 2020 finally got an email from RS stating they have his pair ready for him this afternoon.

 

The last time I talked to the rep at RS he said they were doing a run of 50 but that was last fall so who knows. Hopefully mine come up soon.