Originally posted by cruiseroutfit
Exactly my thoughts Jeremy... it really does come down to installation and application. For example you never hear of a cruiser one having a problem but D30 ones are prone to axle problems and bent housings...
Right Mbryson... 
Hey that little D30 survived about 50K of my driving and wheeling. I'm not at all sad about it.....I have a straight D30 housing again and I expect to get 20Kish out of it with the 35's. If you stay at or below 33" tires, why not keep the little sucker?
LOVE THE ARB......I've only had two problems with the locker (s) in the three years I've ran them. One from the bent housing of the D30. The other from a fuse that blew for the compressor. I couldn't remember where the fuse was for a couple of days. I ran MetalMasher and some other trail (?--can't seem to remember right now) open diffed.......It was actually kind of fun to figure out how reliant on your lockers you are.
As to the 8 1/4" question. I'd break it for sure before replacing with a D44. They're not a bad little axle (the pumpkin is very similarly sized to the D44 if nothing else) and pretty reliable up to at least 33" tires.
Take it down to Andy at SixStates and see if he can see anything wrong with the install or a component. He's done a number of installs and has a fixed the common breakage in the ARB.
The only 'real' issue I hear about is the air line installation. There's a number of ways around that. Routing is probably the most important, IMHO. I'm like Jeremy though, and if I had a 'questionable route' {and I do as my compressor is mounted in the rear cargo area of an XJ--rear line goes into the gas filler tunnel and out near the tank then routes to the pumpkin. there could be some pretty significant 'chafing' through the filler neck area}, I just slipped some hose over the top to 'sleeve' the blue line. Brent's running stainless steel lines so he has no real issues there.
