gogmorgo

Does anyone know how much interchange there is in parts between a Ford front D35 as found in the IFS Ranger? Specifically the carrier? The reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at gear-type limited slips for my '93 ZJ. The wrecking yards all want way more than I want to pay for a well-used d35 axle so I'm going to end up rebuilding it. Yeah yeah wasting money on a d35... But $300 for a junkyard axle with more miles on it than mine? Nah, I'll rebuild the one that is free cause I already have it. I'm probably just going to try picking up a TrueTrac in a Black Friday sale if I can. But! I did notice that Torsen has a listing for a Ford Ranger SLA Front Dana 35. I like Torsen as a company, I've dealt with them in the past as a sponsor for a student project, and like the idea of their product. The Torsen I s a bit pricier than the TrueTrac, but somehow their shipping costs enough less to not make much difference in the end. But it's 50/50 on whether or not the Ranger d35 carrier interchanges. Not much info on the interwebs about it, just the odd forum post and its either a full yes they're the same, or hard no they're not without much supporting evidence. I do know there are some differences given the Ranger is IFS, and there's stuff about reverse vs standard gears that I don't think should apply. Some of the Ranger d35 bearing kits and carriers on Rock Auto list Jeep stuff as interchange, but not all. If I find a good deal on a Truetrac I'll probably just go that way anyhow. The Torsen is "only" a T2, not the T1, which if I remember right from five or so years ago when I was more hands on is a better differential, just more expensive to manufacture. Plus I'm pretty sure the T2 is basically the same thing as the Truetrac anyhow. But like, options aren't bad to have, and there aren't many out there.

I like noisy fuel pumps. At least I know they're doing something.

I had my harmonic balancer go bad as described above. Not even particularly noticeable separation of the rubber bit, but it was enough to create a small wobble that slapped the belt against the timing cover once per revolution, and the belt was winning. No damage to it. The engine's sitting in my shed now with no belt on it but you can still see the groove the old belt cut into a raised bit on the timing cover. There wasn't anything wrong with the belt either. I reused it with the new HB. As far as replacing the HB goes, as was said above the puller kit is definitely helpful. If you can't get the install kit, just use a bolt that matches the balancer bolt but 3/4 of an inch longer, and some washers to stack under it for when it bottoms in the crank. Don't try pulling on a harmonic balancer with the factory bolt. You won't have much thread engagement and you'll risk stripping out the end of the crankshaft, which would be a major pain in the @$$ to address.

Just a random shot of my daily's parking spot.

I think the 4.0/auto front driveshaft will be a touch longer than the ax15's. Maybe an inch or so. At least that's how much further back the tcase is. Whether that's enough to bottom the slip section I don't know. If you're at stock height it'll definitely collapse it further than the aw4 XJ did, so you'll want to make sure the shaft going in is clean, not chowdered up or caked with crud or rusted or something else that could make it seize.

Yeah, I'm pretty glad I did. It's been a solid daily driver. I have had to fix a couple things on it, disuse and questionable repairs/modifications from the PO for the most part. But I've put just about 10,000 miles on it basically only changing the fluids and tightening some fasteners to get it there. I can't really complain about that for a 27-year-old Jeep that I got for less than the equivalent of US$1200. I just got back from a 2000-mile road trip with it. The Dana 35 is being a typical turdy5... pinion bearings are shot, but they do have over 170,000 miles on them, and I did pull a 5500lb trailer up some nasty grades over the Sunwapta pass with it, so there's that. But overall I'm pretty happy with it. The lack of power options and the manual transmission really bring it back down to the rough utilitarian Jeep nature, in contrast to the semi-luxurious hockey-mom-mobile the Grand Cherokee turned into. And it's pretty nice cruising around in a fairly rare vehicle that just blends right into the crowd. My MJs are reasonably unique and afford me a certain amount of anonymity, but my Lada is definitely not anonymous. My previous daily driver was boring but attracted tons of attention. The opposite is nice.

Unless you're changing the oil every 1000 miles or more often, I'm not sure the trip metre on its own will do you much good for maintenance tracking. I mostly use it as a confirmation of my gas gauge. Reset it every time I fill up. It's pretty handy to know how driving conditions affect how far you can go on a tank.

On my ZJ I just adjusted the interval schedule by changing the oil early, so now I just need to change it when the odometer hits multiples of 5,000km. It's a little more work cause miles are dumb, but that could easily be adapted to a 3000 mile interval, or whatever you choose. Cabt really help with the trip meter beyond suggesting changing it out for another. There are threads out there in the general internet about adjusting the reading to reflect vehicle miles. I think we've all been thinking you were wanting to turn it back to zero.

No, it's real. Only cause I'm fool enough to have wanted one since I was a kid. Kinda cool in the way an AMC Gremlin is cool. But not as well assembled as a Gremlib. Or as fast. Or as comfortable. High praise, I know.

Two MJs, an XJ, and a ZJ. And the Lada. The XJ is hiding in the garage. My first MJ and the Niva are probably the ones I feel worst about neglecting. They both need work to pass inspections to reregister after moving. The XJ I guess is neglected too, but it's planned to be parted out. The five-speed ZJ gets attention cause it's my daily. The little MJ was supposed to be a daily driver but then I found a melted piston.

In the UK and EU, and in many other places, speed limits are reduced for vehicles towing a trailer. This means you can get away with a much lower tongue weight (minimum is like 4% GTW -as opposed to as you're never going to be going faster than like 55mph. In North America the higher tongue weight required to stay stable at speeds upwards of 80mph means you'll hit your rear axle weight rating at a lower total trailer weight. EG if your car is good for 500lbs tongue weight, in North America with a 10% tongue weight you're looking at a max trailer weight of 5000lbs, if your car is rated for it. Manufacturers generally go with a safer ratio than the minimum 10%, so you'll likely only see it rated for 2-3000lbs, But in Europe at 5% you're up to 10,000lbs, at which point tongue weight has stopped being the limiting factor to trailer weight, because your 3000lb car simply doesn't have the structure or power to handle that much weight.

Just to illustrate the vent hose: Ignore the shiny new XJ tank on the left. The old crusty one on the right is a LWB 23-gallon MJ tank. The bigger hose is the filler neck, the smaller one beside it is the vent line. Also visible are the two tank vents Hornbrod mentioned, the two round things on the top of the tank. If the tank vents are clogged, it allows pressure to build up in the tank, which blows up the vent hose. Once the level of fuel in the tank hits that vent hose, the gas gets carried up with the air rapidly exiting the tank. I pumped gas back in high school. Due to how much gravel cars saw where I lived, so many of them had clogged vents. That fine rock dust just gets everywhere, so you start figuring out tricks to get gas into cars. I never could get gas to flow at full pump speed into my MJ. Pull the nozzle out slightly to allow vapours to vent, and down pull the pump handle wide open, or set it to a less open stop. Listen closely to it, so you can slow it down if you hear it starting to gurgle back up. Just some suggestions if you need to get gas before you get the vents installed. You don't want to be forced into doing that every time, though. For me it was all well and good until I drove it to California, where they have a boot over the filler nozzle to stop vapour from escaping, with a switch that shuts off the pump if you don't have it pressed up against the fuel filler. On some fancier stations there was a vacuum in the handle to draw out vapours, but on many it was just a sealed boot that forced everything out through your evap system... Getting gas was difficult sometimes.

I don't know that I ever had an appreciable amount of noise with my '91's a/c going. And I only ever noticed the rpm drop or any other effects from switching it on when I was at idle.

The Metric Tonne (sometimes called Big Ton) package was the heavy payload package. It increased payload capacity from ~1400 lbs to ~2200 lbs (1000kg, or one metric tonne). In addition to heavier leaf spring packs, It also came with a heavier duty rear axle, either the AMC 20 or Dana 44 depending on year. With that, the tow package (frame mounted hitch and heavy duty cooling package) and the automatic, it increased tow capacity to 5000lbs as well. Ditto on you probably not wanting original used springs. That's only about 50% off what new aftermarket spring packs cost. If your original standard load springs are sagged, it might be a bit of a bump up if the metric tonne springs are still in good shape, but they're probably not good for 2200lbs any more. The other things to take into consideration about used leaf springs is that they almost always seem to wear unevenly on each side; and they're also what hold your rear axle in place, so if a worn out main leaf breaks, it's not going to be good. But that said, your current springs are also used springs. Just don't reuse axle u-bolts when removing and replacing them, if you think those springs are in good enough condition to run.

Sometimes it's awesome how nature provides a solution for its problems.

It's worth pointing out that JK wheels require adapters to run on stock XJ/MJ axles. Just another thing to factor in if cost is part of the equation. I'm also a fan of factory wheels. They fit like they're intended to be there, correct width and offset, clear the brakes... Most of them look alright too. I also find that anything bigger than a 15" wheel doesn't look as good because of the decreased sidewall to wheel ratio... But that's totally subjective. I liked these wheels so much on my MJ I put them on my ZJ. Well... something like that.

Old thread. Sorry Eagle.

Yeah. It's an XK Waggy. It'll be a 5x4.5 lug pattern, standard XJ width. Unfortunately that lovely grill has been torn out of it since I took that photo four years ago. When I say torn out, I mean there are pieces of it still screwed down. Some people are animals I tell you. This also is the clearest photo of the axle I've got, and now I'm not quite so positively convinced it's a D44 as I was four years ago.

Well they are in fact there, at Wesman Salvage in Brandon, MB. it's an 84/5 Waggy. Stock number 20925 I think? Going by car-part.com listings for that.

Realistically I would never have got one if a factory five-speed hadn't popped up at the right time. It's a much better daily than the POS Jimmy I'd been driving. It's a nice feeling driving something that's "special" but that still flies completely under the radar. 0.06% of ZJs came with an ax15. Even someone who knows what they're looking at really needs to be paying attention to notice. No one randomly walks up to ask about it at gas stations then straight up ignores everything I tell them, no one stares as I drive by, no one's taking pictures of it/me, but I'm still driving something no one else has. It's awesome. And honestly without all the "luxuries" (like power locks ) it feels a lot like what a second-gen XJ might have been. But I'm really getting waaaay off-topic. To drag us back in a roundabout way, about a year ago someone was asking about some odd factory Jeep alloy wheels that were on the early XJs.They're all there, inside an '86(?) Waggy, which IIRC is sitting on a Dana44, at Wesman Salvage in Brandon, MB. I was going to verify that rear axle but since I was last there a ground squirrel dug a hole under the bumper and piled all the excavated material up against the diff, and I didn't quite care enough to dig it out when I've already got a photo of it somewhere.

Yeah, the only reason to be doing this would be if you were resetting the odometer after moving it to another vehicle with a malfunctioning odometer. Even then I think what you're supposed to do is swap directly and then put a tag on it that tells how to correct the reading to what it should be. As it is the axles, suspension, and chassis have whatever mileage is on them. Changing that to reflect otherwise is fraud and is illegal. Presumably no one will find out unless you sell it, but it's still not exactly kosher. Make a note of where mileage was you changed the engine, and leave it at that. In my mind a higher-mileage vehicle that looks like it's been maintained well is worth more than one with low miles that looks like it hasn't, or it's got tons of miles on it.

The d35 was also the only axle available under the early ZJ, including the tow package that was rated for 6500lbs. Although it occured to me just now that the full-time-only transfer cases meant some of that load is distributed to the front axle, which likely makes a huge difference in longevity. It also follows that the people most likely to be doing Jeep things are more likely to swap out the full-time tcase for something like a 231, which again would accelerate wear on the rear axle over one where the front is also taking load. Especially if they're towing with it like this idiot. I guess if I want to continue using my ZJ as a tow pig the 3.73 axles would make more sense, and swapping in a 242. But that kinda takes away from what makes a factory ax15/231 ZJ special.

I've kinda been looking at the d44a. Seems like the ZJ guys lean pretty heavily towards it being a better axle than the d35. Couple mentions of it consuming bearings a bit more quickly but that's it. My ZJ's d35 is howling and I made the mistake of crawling under and wiggling the pinion back and forth. Whether it's from towing 5500+ lbs over the Sunwapta pass or a couple creek crossings with a slight weep to the pinion seal, or just plain old wear and tear, failure is imminent. Not quite a 1/16" radial play in the pinion bearing, although there's not as much axial play so hopefully not so imminent I won't make it 1000 miles home... But at any rate I've been to a couple yards and haven't seen a 44a under a ZJ yet. Whatever that means. I also haven't found a d35 with both drums and 3.55's. The few the one yard had listed on car-part.com were either v8's with 3.73's or else no one could find the Jeep in the yard. The d35's with discs and 3.55's were all higher mileage than mine, and the few that were convenient to investigate were as badly trashed as mine. While normally I wouldn't be opposed to the disc brake upgrade, I just put new shoes and drums on this one, and effectively the side of the road isn't somewhere I really want to be doing that upgrade, especially not when I actually need the parking brake functional, and I'm paying full retail on new parts. And I wasn't so keen on the $300/axle I got quoted when they'd been sitting on/in the ground for many years. Especially not a d35. But I'm getting pretty off-topic here. Probably the takeaway is that ZJ axles aren't what you should be looking at for an upgrade.

Is it actually a D44 under the KJ, or just the c8.25? Pretty sure 4.10 was the standard ratio for a 4-banger KJ.

I've been thinking about getting a sled, so I watched a bunch of these: ...not really in a huge rush to get a sled now.