DirtyComanche

Just did a little trip to bang off an inspection. It was a total disaster, or what we call 'buisness as usual'. Anyways, I actually thought to take my camera and pictures this time, so here's some... Pulled over at Dease Lake, because I needed to stretch my legs. Image Not Found It was all frosty, you can see it on the rails... Winter is almost here. Image Not Found Back on the road, near Huston I think. Yeah, it's a REALLY busy road. Image Not Found Hmm, snow ahead... Image Not Found Somewhere past Kitwanga, stopped to stretch again... Image Not Found Old FSR I was dying to take a drive down. Image Not Found Downtown Stewart Image Not Found Drove over to Alaska (Hyder) because we were bored, nice little pond near the bear feeding grounds. Image Not Found This area is a tourist attraction, the bears feed on the running salmon, and people pay big bucks to watch from relative safety. The fish are done, and the bears are about to go to sleep, so all is quiet. Image Not Found The Pacific Image Not Found Image Not Found We drove the truck out on this rotten old pier. We took bets on if a 1-ton would break it or not... Well, the truck didn't wind up in the drink... Image Not Found Image Not Found Image Not Found

Leaving loose change visible is like having a huge 'break into me' sign on your truck. A lot of low-end thieves are just looking for enough money to get a fix ($5 to $40) or a bottle, and change is an easy enough way to get that... If you had the ash tray closed, it's one of the first places people look. And leaving the doors unlocked just asks for people to look...

I'll say 95% certain it's a 60. For lots of reasons. The first being it appears to be stamped on it, as it is on all Dana axles. However, you'd really need to wire brush it to say for sure. Secondly, there's like eleventy-billion D60 rears out there, where-as D70s and D80s are less common. Also, I can't really say if it is SF or FF (your picture sucks) but I'm assuming it's SF, which means it has to be a 60. And the brakes are too small for a 70 or 80. So, 60 VS 70? The only thing a rear 60 has on a 70 is ground clearance, and it has precious little more than a 70. The 70 has a larger ring gear (10.5" vs 9.75"), bigger axleshafts (normally it will be 35 spline 1.5" AFAIK, vs most rear 60s being 30 spline 1.31" - the same as a D44), better pinion bearings (especially in the 70HD units), and better wheel bearings and hubs. Oh, and 70s come with huge drum brakes normally, not that you should care (not really a pro IMHO, as drum brakes are 'stupid') Actually, looking at the picture again, it might well be FF.

My W123, W126, and W210 Benz always worked best with glow plugs. :cheers: That reminds me of when I first bought my cummins, I posted something (as a joke) on a certain forum to the extent that I was having trouble locating the spark plugs... I got quite a detailed explaintation on why I should sell my newly acquired truck :roll: (They have neither spark plugs nor glow plugs)

So, where's the missing peice? I've seen the electrodes break, but never the threaded portion. Is the tip all still intact?

Lots. A friend of mine ran D44s with 37s and a modded LT1, and he has a creative driving style. He twisted a few rear shafts, but he only ever ran the stockers, no 4340. Oh, he grenaded a bunch of front outers before he wised up and bought chromos. Once he had chromos, he didn't break 'em. But, the way he drives is such that you rarely see replicated. And, honestly, a 37" is a fair amount more tire than a 35".

D44 would work fine.

I'm sure it could. Pop it out and throw it in a pot of boilling water and inspect it.

Well, what tire size? That matters more than power...

It depends entirely what you want to do with the truck. I can think of a lot more axles that are worth swapping, given the right cirumstances. Often for the 4wd guys, the front end gives up the ghost too, and there's NO real upgrades that run the 5x4.5 bolt pattern. So, now all those 5x4.5 rear ends are not logical swap choices. 60s have their place. My current build will have 60s. I will not accept failure. For a 2wd street truck (not what you're doing) I'd probably use an isuzu 12B for a 'bang for the buck' setup. Given you can get them for about $100 easily enough, and they have disk brakes, 4.56 gears, 1.32" shafts, and a 8.66" ring gear with some nice pinion bearings all packaged in a 58.5" width with a fairly light housing. IMHO, with 2wd the bolt patterns don't need to match, since I wouldn't carry a spare, I have BCAA (I guess it's AAA in the states) for a reason. For a mild 4x4 which will be keeping the D30 front, the XJ/MJ D44s work decent, and the 8.8s can be had. Having owned an 8.8, I'd probably never run one again, unless it was super cheap (the good ones aren't here). 9"s are cool, but at 35 splines the side gears start to get small in a lot of applications. I don't know if it has created a real world problem (there has been some failures with the ARBs, but it's hard to say what they were doing to them). The ultra low pinion is a drawback to me, and I'm reluctant to use them because of that. However, for the big bucks truehi9 can fix that. Anyways, there's lots of crap out there that works. Mogs, Volvos, 2.5T Rockwells, yeah, some guys like 'em too...

So, any pics of what is under that fender flare?

I'd settle for a shot of it in the dash. I don't think he has the dash in for some reason...

It's unfortunate, but typical. It's so much easier to wedge some bondo and glass mat in there and paint over it. And as Eagle stated, you should just learn yourself, as it is definatly a worthwhile skill and will save you much money in the long run. I wish I was better at it myself... You might consider getting the truck acid dipped. I don't know what that costs (I can't even get it done here), but it will remove everything, and will definatly leaves you with a clean starting point.

In the early years, it was only ABS that determined if you got the larger joints in an XJ with the 242... My 89 XJ with a NP242 had 260Xs. Or so I believe... I'd suggest putting the newer 760X (I believe) joints in over the 297X. They're forged, mucho stronger than the 297X. But otherwise the same, so if you find 297X shafts with beat up joints just stick the 760Xs in them. Oh, and apparently the grand cherokee CV shafts actually aren't horrible. Or so I hear... I wouldn't say they're great, however.

Pinch fitting? As in the splined adapter for the u-joint assemblies in the steering shaft? It's a SAE bolt, head is 7/16. Steering is GM, not metric. They can be kinda tight, heat it first.

I've seen no such animal on a renix era 4.0L, but I could not tell you about a 2.5L.

Have you used an angle grinder or welder anywhere near the window? The sparks will melt into the laminated surface. Then they will rust. It will look really bad.

This is my family.

You'd be suprised how much power can be pulled from a motor that has a high volumetric efficentcy and a high redline... There's a lot of N/A drag cars out there that will do some seriously mean times. And a lot of the guys who are into the bonneville (sp?) thing will run N/A nailheads and other such engines that are really NOT known for being efficent, nor do they have huge displacement. But like I said, I think the weight cutting will be very important. You're starting at around 2900lbs (S/B) or 3100 (L/B), and you're going to want to decrease that number by a lot!

Engine from the same family, so a head from the same family is fine? Because the 4.2 and 4.0HO heads do not have the intake ports in the same location as a renix 4.0L. At least, not on the manifold side of things... The better (HO) heads have the intake port raised. It's worth power, quite a bit of it. I think you should think about weight reduction. Because I like that topic. How much can you mod the body/frame?

There's differences between 2x4 and 4x4 models, plus differences based on the year. So yeah...

That's a clean looking machine. Glad to see you decided to eschew the wood-grain.

Really? I mean really? Really?

Clean up the pinch seam, and look closely at it. You can see the spot welds, they'll be circular dimples/bumps. Cut past those and she'll pop apart.

It's the special prize when you reach 5000 posts. Only 1581 more and you guys don't have to put up with me!