Search the Community

Hello All, This will be a little long, I apologise in advance for this. Since I bought my Comanche, I've left the front driveshaft out. I just never got around to putting it back, but I did replace the ujoint in it. The double cardan seems fine so I've left that untouched. This last saturday I decided to put it in, seeing as winter is coming. This has had some interesting consequences. Whenever I drive my Jeep on the highway, I really do not dare go over 75 miles an hour. The reason being is that a very strange noise starts coming from the back of the cab area. It's a slow helicopter noise, but it does not come with any kind of vibrations. After installing my front DS, I now hear it around 55 miles an hour, but coming from the front. Before I go on, a little background info is necessary. In both diffs, I have a kind of locker installed. This was done by the previous owners. I am unsure of the make and model, it resembles an aussie/detroit locker. It is a self contained locker, no air or cables, just worm gears. It is paired with 4.56 gears. As a result of this, the yoke of my front axle spins in synch with my driving speed. In other words, my front DS is constantly spinning, even in 2WD. It is not powered by the transfercase, but by the front diff. I've been told this is not normal, that the front DS is only supposed to spin if driven by the transfercase. After talking this over with my jeep mechanic, we've kind of agreed that I need to at least swap out my front diff for the traditional style of open diff. Basically, to revert back to a carrier and spider gears. He claims this should resolve the noise and front axle vibrations I've been having. It would stop the front DS from spinning all the time. To me, this makes sense. My front DS isn't meant to spin at 55+ miles an hour. I'd like to stop this. But now I'm coming to my second part of this, the physical swap. My mechanic says I can take out the locker, take off the ring gear and install that on a traditional carrier. All I would need are spider gears, either new or used. Is this true? Will the ring gear swap over? Also, what is the difference between loaded and empty when it comes to buying a carrier? To summarize, I'm looking to revert back to a traditional style differential to eliminate the noise starting at 55 MPH, without having to shim or set backlash in my diff. Is this as easy as my mechanic describes? Can I really just swap everything over without ruining anything? Any insight is appreciated. Crap, wrong forum. Would a moderator be so kind as to move this to MJ tech? Thank you!