DirtyComanche

So would be the benefit of a 35 out of a jk vs a 44 from an older ford? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk D30, not 35. The only clear benefits, IMHO, would be overall less weight, perhaps somewhat less complexity of the install, better ground clearance, and better u-joints/outer axle shafts. The JK D30 gear set was upgraded over the prior D30 in regards to how they cut the gears, and the pinion size and bearings. This should make the gear set close to the regular D44 in strength, although this is inferred as the way Dana rates input torque limits makes it hard to know, however there's lots of JKs running around with 35-37" tires on their D30 fronts with minimal failures (after they do some other basic upgrades). The outer stub shafts on a regular D44 are a puny 19 spline. This is intentional, as they intended for any failure to occur in the outer shaft or hub. On a JK D30 they're either 30 spline or 32 spline (the JK D44 are 32 spline for sure). A XJ/MJ D30 they're 27 spline. The old style D44 is a clear downgrade in this department, but it can be upgraded to 30 spline outs BUT you need to buy either Yukon Hardcore Hubs or drive flanges. Most of the aftermarket hubs for the old style D44 suck too (you listening Warn? With your 'premium' overpriced garbage hubs :thwak: ). U-joints on the old style D44 are a 760X type (or 297X, same thing but old style). A XJ/MJ D30 91+ (I believe) are also the 760X. The JK uses a larger joint, the 7331X, IIRC. It will not fit in the old style D44, and it is a clear upgrade from the 760X. That said, you can run some high-zoot aftermarket u-joints in an old style D44 or D30 to 'solve' this weakness, but they tend to be labour intensive (bushing style, must grease daily), and the ears of the yokes will just stretch out and fail anyways because there wasn't space to make them large enough in the old D44/D30. Ball joints are fairly comparable between all of the above. There is aftermarket solutions for all of them too. Short of going to a D60 or bigger there isn't a clear winner. The old style D44 does have better inner Cs. Thus bracing or trussing the XJ/MJ/JK axles is always a good idea. The outer knuckles on many D44s are crap though, and the JK ones will be better. Later XJ D30 ones are better even. The JK knuckle already allows for proper crossover steering without milling/buying high steer arms. The JK axle tubes are weaker than most older D44s, but it's not so clear cut. Ford used a lot of different types, the 78/79 HP D44 with the cast wedges was terrible, and the JK stuff is probably stronger stock vs stock. But there was some F250 HD D44s that used a 3x.500" axle tube, IIRC, I had one of them, and that's in D60 strength territory, BUT it's also D60 weight at that point. In the middle of this is most of the Ford HP D44s and the Wagoneer LP D44, which were 2.75x.375" tubes, which is IMHO a good compromise, better than the JK stuff stock vs stock, but if wheeled hard I would still recommend a truss. I would sleeve and truss a JK axle if running one (the sleeves are cheap and easy to install, I would plug weld them in more places than the instructions say to though). Honestly, decide what you want the truck to do, tire size, wheeling type, lockers or not, gonna jump it, etc. There is no clear answer on any of this, but without defining the intended use and needed strength there is no answer at all.

The odd sized square drive plugs are one of the hallmarks of the Peugeot tranny, as they are a metric size. The Peugeot is also split down the length of the case, that is there is a flange at the top and the bottom of it where the case bolts together. I'm guessing you have a Peugeot. It's unfortunately a piece of crap. The steering can be upgraded using a V8 ZJ tie rod assembly, and a newer XJ drag link assembly. I think I put all the Moog P/Ns to do this in my build thread. Allegedly the ZJ drag link fits too, but I haven't tried it and there seemed to be some debate. The track bar is another animal, and I suggest buying an aftermarket one if you're going to lift it. All the XJ track bars from 87-01 are the same, so no upgrade there, and I do not think the ZJ one will fit or be an upgrade if it did. Make sure you have a D44 rear before you order anything for it. They're much less common than the D35. D35 is an egg shaped cover, D44 is a sideways diamond. Any set of normal non-JK low pinion D44 gears should fit. Yukon, Motive, G2, Dana, etc, will sell new gear sets. You will also need a bearing and setup (shims and seals) kit, available from the same brands. I don't personally like transferring used gears from one axle to another, they rarely setup properly if you do that, but the D44 is a common axle in older GM, Dodge, some Ford, Jeep, IH, etc applications and it would not be impossible to find a set of low pinion 3.55 D44 gears with the carrier. Make sure the carrier is a 30 spline setup, as there is 19 spline (IIRC) applications in older stuff, and that will not work. I'm running slightly larger tires than you with a manual tranny and 3.55 gears. I think it's fine. If I was going to use it as a serious offroader I would get a 4:1 tcase or doubler before I would change the gearing in the axles.

I like that front bumper, real clean looking. When you truss that axle be careful to not warp it.

What are you looking for? A weld on brace for the frame rail? Or a cross brace from the track bar bracket to the other frame rail?

I can assure you that you're missing something. However I'm not sure if you're talking about the rocker lock button on the interior, or the push button on the exterior handle. If the handles break you buy new ones, because they're junk. The interior rocker button is easy, pull the interior panel off the door and reach up from the bottom.

I think even the SWB 2wd trucks used them. I cut up and scrapped a shaft that I think was the original from my truck, as it started as a 2wd, and it had the rubber dampener thing. It was probably 3.5" diameter. Like I said, I don't have a lot of clearance, and I've got a 2.25" (IIRC) diameter retubed front shaft.

I don't know how well/if the RE9905 support brackets fit the MJ... They might be a waste of time because as I understand it they're just bracing the control arm bracket in a similar fashion to how the MJ already is; that bracing is one of the differences between the XJ and MJ chassis. The RE1665 track bar bracket should be a decent piece, you need the RE1660 track bar to go with it. I'm debating ordering them for my own truck. If you're building an all out wheeling rig they aren't the best setup, but they're a good compromise for driving nicely and weekend warrioring.

How close is it? Measure it. LWB or SWB? Mine's about 3" and it's a LWB. It should be a SWB given that it's a SporTruck and the P/N is for a SWB tank. I'm running a retubed (lengthened) front shaft on my SWB, and I doubt I even have 3". I'd measure it but I'm not in town.

How close is it? They're normally quite close... The 2wd driveshaft is a large diameter tube, and if anything else is amiss (rear axle is bent over due to a crash, or the trans is mounted wrong or the mounts are shot) it could easily be too close.

I still haven't figured out Imgur's resizing thing between using my phone to upload and running noscript in my proprietary browser. The forum should be set to automagically limit the image size, but that's a display preference and I'm guessing it loads the full thing then dithers it. If Photobucket would actually still work I wouldn't have this problem. But it doesn't. :rant: About the mirrors, what was on there was already a transplant (I think they were stolen from a FSJ :nuts:). I couldn't find any cheap generic that would work well, and even took some random crap home from the junkyard and looked through the shed. I was left torn between ordering the 97+ mirrors, Toyota mirrors (my soul would burn in hell), these, or tracking down a set of first generation Racemirrors and building brackets for them (to bolt in the stock location). Functionally the 97+ mirrors are better than the early ones, but they're still just a little small for my liking. I would have loved to get a set of the Racemirrors, but the current generation would not work as well IMHO, leaving you to track down used and rare mirrors. That said, I may still barter for a set and try them sometime. They are still the wrong shape to look 'right' on the XJ/MJ though, IMHO. If I peeled the bondo off the doors I bet we could find more holes. :rotf:

Thanks guys!

Looks really nice. :cheers: Plans for mods?

This was actually a couple days ago, when the P/S box blew up. The mirrors loosened up really bad on the washboard and one got knocked off shortly after this picture.

So this mod may not make me terribly popular... I needed some mirrors since the ones that were on there were crap, and well, they fell off... More on that later. Amazon to the rescue... With YJ mirrors. Install was not complicated. I just put fender washers/nuts on the back side. Originally I was going to weld some nuts to a piece of flat bar to make the door more rigid, and install/removal a little easier, and I may do that eventually as the mirrors shake a bit and I believe it is partially because of the door. New door hinge bushings and strikers would also probably help. Either way they're a million times better than the old mirrors, and being YJ mirrors I can just order more if I goof them up. The doors are now officially swiss cheese though, as there is a ton of holes in them. I may address that later, but honestly the body work on this thing is so bad it's pretty minor. I honestly think they look better on the truck than I thought they would. Feel free to hate them if you disagree though.

Yes. They interchange.

It will ride terrible. As you increase lift, the control arm angle gets steeper, which means that the front axle has to travel forwards on compression/will not naturally want to compress. You will feel every little bump in the road, and changing shocks or springs will not do anything to help it.

I wasn't going to say it initially, but it is a bojang/lazy/screwit rebuild thing to omit a set of clutch packs to make reassembly easier... I've never personally rebuilt that style of LS diff, but I am told it can be a pain to get the correct number of clutch packs in them, and absolutely terrible to add one on each side above that (common performance option).

A clutch pack type LS like that can only do so much, if there's a large traction differential it will wind up basically just spinning the low traction tire. Do what Don says to see if it is working at all. Without the friction modifier they actually lock up more, and don't want to unlock. If you double dipped by using gear oil that has the modifier in it (many do, read the bottle) and adding it as a separate additive, I could see it slightly reducing the effectiveness of it. Beyond that, yeah, you can screw up rebuilding them. I'd talk to the shop and see if they want you to pound sand, or do something up a rope, and if so I'd pull the cover to see what's going on.

Why are you relocating it? It will most likely run pig rich. Trying to keep it clean, if it runs too rich I'll just put it back on the intake. Luckily I have my R.E.M monitor to monitor the A/F ratio ;). As far as keeping it clean, I'd suggest doing the mods to the breathers on the valve covers. It seems to have helped a bit on my rig, I'm going to swap the air filter to a new one at some point and monitor things.

I'd take the engine apart to see what happened... But if the head is good, it's worth saving, along with the intake, exhaust manifold, engine accessories, oil filter adapter, and probably a ton of small parts off the engine. Otherwise I wouldn't be interested in much off of it, personally.

Why are you relocating it? It will most likely run pig rich.

I was hoping to have a better update, but I don't. The P/S box suddenly blew the sector shaft seal out completely. As in you couldn't fill it with fluid as fast as it would leak out. :rotf: I had two boxes in the shed, so I grabbed the less leaky looking one and threw it in. It seems okay so far, but I will probably order some seals for this box and clean it up so there is a known good spare. Since I was in there I finally changed the motor mounts, which turned into the usual screwing around way more than should be needed. I had to pull the oil filter and adapter off to do the one, so I figured it was time to change to summer oil anyways. Broken stuff, I try to write what's wrong with things in a sorta obvious manner since I hate reinstalling parts that I 'knew' were bad: Cut the bolt down and flipped it around: Anyways, I now have a core set of OEM motor mounts if I want to get the terrible Energy Suspension poly mounts that require you to remove the cages from the rubber of another set of mounts. I might wind up ordering them, since I don't like the engine flopping around, and the other options are rather pricey. :dunno: What else? Well, the exhaust came uncoupled where I had to cut it to do the clutch. I'm going to try to dig up some flanges and repair it properly, failing that I'll weld it back together for now and come up with a long term plan. Unfortunately due to shipping costs ordering an exhaust kit is quite pricey for me, but the whole system on this truck really should be redone. Also I've decided I want to buy or build some long arms, entirely for ride reasons. Unfortunately the set I had originally eyed up that were on my friend's POS Ranger are no longer available, he actually managed to sell the truck. So I'm going to look into that... Oh, and I realized that not only are my sway bar bushings shot, but the swaybar is actually hitting all sorts of things; I forgot to take a picture, but it's quite nifty. Either way I need to do something about it.

Not going to run the heat shield on the intake manifold? I wouldn't worry tooooo toooo much about the block/bottom end, they're pretty tough. Just keep an eye and an ear on things.

The one in the head is only for the gauge. You don't "need" it. Just don't overheat it...

That's a good idea with the wooden block to form them over. Looks like they came out pretty good, especially for using that thick of metal.