mvusse

I have had an Aussie in my D30 for 4 years now. After 14,000 road miles and (more importantly) over 100 days off road, the vast majority of which on 35" tires it is worn out. As in extremely worn out and not really being usable any more. But those off road trips were not driving a road riddled with pot holes, which a lot of people around NE Ohio seem to think is hard core off road. It is not just romping through the mud spinning the tires like my daughter likes to do. I'm talking about axle shaft snapping, driveshaft twisting, control arm mount ripping rocks, ledges and hill climbs. All in all, I think it is a miracle it has lasted as long as it has, which would be a salute to some fine engineering. It was the best $230 I have ever spent on this truck. As will all automatic lockers in the front axle, though, you will not able to safely use 4wd on snow anymore, as there won't be enough traction for it to unlock. That means that quite possibly when you mean to make a turn you turn the wheels but keep going straight. In 2wd it is completely invisible.

How is the XJ tank "designed to clear the driveshaft"? In an XJ it mounts behind the rear axle where there is no driveshaft.

Afriend had a 2.5 YJ with manual steering. When his went bad it was cheaper to upgrade to PS than it was to replace the manual steering box.

I have wheeled with 35s on a D30 for three years. I'm done with the D30! Tired of losing wheels on the highway, depleting 4 junk yards of good unit bearings (the one that caused me to lose my wheel, incidentally was the last one I bought new, Timken brand) and axle shafts, ripping control arm mounts off the axle and rebuilding pumpkins/replacing the entire housing. Over those three years I have gone through 4 axle housings, three gear sets, multiple pinion bearings and countless shafts, u joints and unit bearings. If I add that up I could have had a D60 under there long ago.

I ran small 33x12.50r15 on 15x8 rims with 4" backspacing for about a week. Depending on how I adjusted the control arms I could not keep them out of either the front or the back of the fender during turns. Not even very sharp turns. Then I added 1.75" spring spacers and went SOA in the rear. Fit nicely then. My daughter's XJ has ~4" of lift and runs 32x10.50 (265/75R16) on stock 16" Liberty rims with WJ lower control arms. They work pretty good, I only had to cut some of the plastic off the inside of the fender flares where you can't see it. Have to keep the sway bars connected off road, though. They still rub on sharp turns, though.

Only vehicle I had with manual steering was my 79 F100. Parking lots sucked. After I dislocated a finger in a hairpin turn I added PS. Best mod I ever did.

I used a gasket on the rear diff of my Olds 98 (RIP), but nowadays I use blue or red RTV instead of a gasket. If you're going in there more often a Lube Locker gasket is a great time saving investment.

Not all D44s are created equal. This one uses 6 lug axles so you would need adapters, different wheels front and rear, or replace the front axle as well. And 3.13 gears are not the best so you're looking at a regear too, probably in the range of $300 for parts plus $500 labor. So that axle will cost you over $1K....

And unit bearings.

If this is a DD, I would suggest against an automatic locker in the rear. Also don't forget wheel spacers or wheels with less backspacing to clear the inside wall of the rear wheel wells as the 8.8 is not as wide as our stock axles. And unless you plan to jump it, there is no reason to truss that axle other then throw away money better spent elsewhere (although welding the tubes to the diff housing would be good).

Both Autozone and Advance Auto Parts carry Dorman. O Reilly's probably does too.

Don't need to unscrew the 4 bolts. Push down on the ring around the shifter and rotate it 45 or so degrees and the shifter pops out.

NO! I bought one for Sparkles. IIRC the lower end uses a 7/16" bolt, which is a bit larger than the stock 10mm one. This is good. Drill out the hole to the correct size, and if it had been wallowed out that will be fixed at the same time, BUT The upper end uses a 12mm bolt, but the holes in the bracket are 13mm. This allows the upper end to move around. NOT GOOD! I drilled out the 12mm bushing to 1/2" and used a 1/2" bolt to partly fix this (can still move around some, but only about half as much as the 12mm one), and am debating on going to 9/16" or 14mm. Both of which require redrilling the bracket which requires taking it off the truck again. Not looking forward to that.

There's an XJ conversion like that in NE Ohio too, but it's white. Owner even took it off road at Southington Offroad Park

My coozies came in the mail yesterday. Thanks, Pete!

Don't know about the long arm stuff, but out of all the different brands parts on my truck, the Rock Krawler adjustable upper control arms are the only pieces to have never given me any problem whatsoever.

Going to be playing with construction paper to see if I can come up with a truss design that works around (or maybe with) the driver side coil spring mount.

Kinda. It works, so why change it. But I'm making upper control arms with rod ends of some sort on both ends instead of a bushing on the axle end. May also get rid of the lower control arm bushings on the axle end.

Yes, slightly modified on the driver side to mount to/over top of the cast in leaf spring perch. Had a 20% off coupon which made them like $41 or so. And then I had to cut down the heads of the bolts that bolted into the perch down some as they interfered with the spring plate. Don't think I'm doing too badly for being a wood worker....

I may have to double check that. The 242 in Sparkles came from a ZJ, and I am *pretty sure* it was a 94.

But the only issue I have had with large tires and a front axle was one of the steering box bolts ripping through the frame. Upgrading the frame where the box mounts is more important than upgrading the box.