Axles for a softcore build

[Provience]

how in the hell are jeep people denting 1/4" tubes? do they make them of lead?

i nearly ground through my minitruck front axle with rock gouges before i finally added some plate to it, dented the diff cover portion of it once. did manage to rip open my rear axle housing from a bound up joint on a trackbar, but that was an easy fix.

i think toyota figured "good enough for a frame, good enough for an axle" because the frames are all light, they also tear often.

BUT!! it isn't a big deal almost never catastrophic day ending stuff and for 99% of people in general use, they will never know the difference. hodgie with his AA guns in the trunk doesn't have an issue cruising the goat trails fwiw.

to save a hundred pounds or so, it would be worth considering using a 3/16" ~3" tube if you do end up hacking together an axle out of parts, just get/make some size bigger-ers or smaller-ers as needed to get the C and the diff housing on

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

how in the hell are jeep people denting 1/4" tubes? do they make them of lead?

[...]

to save a hundred pounds or so, it would be worth considering using a 3/16" ~3" tube if you do end up hacking together an axle out of parts, just get/make some size bigger-ers or smaller-ers as needed to get the C and the diff housing on

As to how they dent them, I think it mostly is a case of asking more than the vehicle was ever intended to provide. There's guys who literally bought these things and started wheeling them in the rocks before they had worn the nubs off the factory tires. Plus there's probably some abusive or straight up retarded driving factor in there. And the sample size is large, we've all see long lines of JKs going out on a Barbie jeep adventure, the sheer number of them means they're going to break stuff. The tubes are made from DOM tube, 1018 I'd assume, so it's not like it's crap steel.

As to the weight difference by chintzing out on the wall thickness, 5' of 3x.500 is 66.75lbs, while 5' of 3x.188 is 28.25lbs. That's a 38.5lbs difference (plus 5' is more than you need, so it would be less, and honestly .500 wall is excessive, but this is illustrative). I get that grams make ounces, ounces make pounds, and pounds make tenths, but I can't buy into going that light in the name of saving a few pounds on a critical part of a component.

[Johnny5]

Mr hmf s 4 runner weighs in at over 5400 lbs i believe. And its held together pretty good thing on toy axles. Im a little bias tho because i just believe in toyotas. Nothing can be Beat, abused, and rocked as hard as a toyota stock and still work at the end.

Run toyota ifs man. It may only put out the horse power of a ceiling fan but ive never managed to break a cv with 36x13.5 bolted on. And that axle combo prob weighs less than the oil you out into a dana 60

[Scoobienorth]

I think part of the Jk housing bending is that they are wider the tires have more leverage, the other is that it’s really easy to get big tires on a jk. 35’s basically fit stock or close to it and the suspension is pretty good stock even so it’s easy to overdrive them. One half decent hit and they are done. I did that to my tj rubicon. Never hit anything that hard and I bent it pretty easy. The tj housing is lighter than the jk though

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

I think part of the Jk housing bending is that they are wider the tires have more leverage, the other is that it’s really easy to get big tires on a jk. 35’s basically fit stock or close to it and the suspension is pretty good stock even so it’s easy to overdrive them. One half decent hit and they are done. I did that to my tj rubicon. Never hit anything that hard and I bent it pretty easy. The tj housing is lighter than the jk though

They're running heavy 37s on a D30, and 40s on the D44, with near zero backspacing wheels too. It's not anyone in their right mind would ever recommend that.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

How centered is a Tundra rear actually? I forgot, I need the rear to be damn near centered or slightly passenger offset. Otherwise the driveshaft and gas tank tend to get really close.

I might have to verify the JK axle won't have issues with that even.

[pointsnorth]

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[pointsnorth]

this is a first gen tundra 8.4 axle so basically full width truck stuff as you can see the pinion is offset a couple inches at most to the passenger side. i believe this one is 65 ish wide. you may want to look at the tacoma width 8.4 but this give you an idea of the pinion offset

[Snowracer]

if you want that 44 and all the parts let know as ill let it go for pennies on the dollar

could always retube it and not have to deal with the cast wedge crap

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

if you want that 44 and all the parts let know as ill let it go for pennies on the dollar

could always retube it and not have to deal with the cast wedge crap

Anyone know where I can get some 3" (I assume, maybe those are 2.75" OD tubes?) DOM tubing that isn't Encore? North West Fab maybe? TMR doesn't list anything that big.

Because you know I'm thinking about it, regardless if it's a good idea.

[Snowracer]

if you want that 44 and all the parts let know as ill let it go for pennies on the dollar

could always retube it and not have to deal with the cast wedge crap

Anyone know where I can get some 3" (I assume, maybe those are 2.75" OD tubes?) DOM tubing that isn't Encore? North West Fab maybe? TMR doesn't list anything that big.

Because you know I'm thinking about it, regardless if it's a good idea.

try talking to that HMF guy as he has some hook ups can also try Western Canadian Rockwell as know they would be able to get what ever you are after

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Honestly, rethinking this again.

If I'm going to run selectable hubs and a large bolt pattern, I might as well go to 8x6.5 since I have wheels that will work, and it's the same pattern as most of the vehicles I own. Converting the Ford D44 to 8 lug pretty much requires tracking down a whole Ford 8 lug D44, so that's not ideal (there isn't much stuff out there that I can find). Going to a 60/44 hybrid would be great, I have a D60 I can rob parts off of, but the amount of work and expense required seems a little stupid for the hypothetical weight savings. The D60 uses 3.125" axle tubes, and I would have to reuse the Cs I have for it since you can't buy the non-superduty BJ Cs it seems, so you're pretty stuck using 3.125" tube and then turning it down to just under 3" to fit it the D44 housing. This fairly well precludes the option of using lighter tubing then the factory 3.125x.500" that Ford spec'd on the D60, as if you turn down 3.125x.375" it will be a little too thin where it's going into the housing, so there's no potential weight savings there. I forgot you need to machine a pocket for the seal into the inside of the tube, which adds another level of complication. I looked at the option of harvesting the tubes from some of my scrap LP D44 housings if I was to just try to retube the D44 to the exact same dimensions that it is for as cheap and easily as possible, however both the D44s I have are Wagoneer style and it just won't work properly (you could turn the long side into a short side, but that's saving zero work as you still need to machine the seal pocket and the OD to fit in the Ford housing, or I guess you could save the housing side of it and move the C, either way that does not solve the fact the long tube isn't long enough).

I think I'd need a proper 4 jaw chuck and a large steady rest to have any hope of pulling off the machining. Not saying I don't need those things as it is, but I'm just not comfortably there yet.

I think if I want to run a larger/better axle than the JK D44 I am better off simply taking the D60 I have and cutting 3-4" off the long side (properly machining the cut down tube OD to fit the C be damned), and then heavily shaving it. Weight wise it's going to be close to the same thing as the hybrid axle.

I don't know. I could also just embrace the loveable trash that is Ford radius arms. I was planning to run a radius arm setup as it was, just I wasn't planning to run that style.

[Provience]

well.....damn. D60 and being all reasonable about it.

might as well, sounds like the cheapest, easiest, fasterest option.

[Helidump]

sooooo you went from softcore build to custom built hybrid to 1 ton axles pretty quick. whats your definition of hardcore?


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[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

sooooo you went from softcore build to custom built hybrid to 1 ton axles pretty quick. whats your definition of hardcore?


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It went full circle. At this rate I'm going to stuff the POS XJ D30 that's out in the trees into it. Or at least I think it's out there, I haven't looked for it in a long time.