So,
Last Saturday, I was considering all the things that I wanted to get done on the TJ before I head down to the big Moab event.... Fall Fling 2006. At the time, I had open diffs with 3.55's, and was running 34" tires. I knew that this needed to change. Given my past years of experience getting ready for Moab trips, I wanted to avoid the usual staying up until 4am the night before we leave because I didn't get the Jeep ready in time. This time would be different - I would be ready and relaxed at go time.
I came up with a logical list of priorities. Obviously, a change in gears and perhaps a locker install would be my first task, followed by installing my CB, rockrails, and trailer light wiring. Luckily, a good friend donated a LP D30 out of a 2000 TJ with 4.10 gears from the factory. It had a damaged passenger side LCA mount, but other than that seemed to be in pristine condition. For the rear, I ordered a set of thick Yukon 4.10's from alljeep.com complete with all new bearings and a master install kit. I was set.
With the assistance of my very skilled father, we borrowed some good tools from his shop and went to work on the rear D44. Dana axles, as most of you know, are pretty time consuming to set up gears in. I used a die grinder to make some homemade setup bearings to speed up the process, and they ended up working flawlessly. I did find that a retainer for the factory limited slip had broken and come loose, but having it gone should just lessen the effectiveness of the Trac Lok which really is marginal anyway. In about 4 hours we had everything down to good, tight tolerances and took it for a spin. I was delighted to have a smooth, quiet gear setup.
When I returned home, I went straight to work on the D30. First, I torched off the mangled LCA mount, and carefully removed a donor from an old D30 axle I had out back for parts. After a lot of grinding, torching, and MIG welding, it fit and looked great. Then I pulled the shafts, checked the joints, and began to install the locker. The Detroit EZ locker was saved from my black '88 XJ just a few months earlier. This locker had really changed my mind about lunchbox lockers, as I'd had a few problems with them in D35's before. This one had been flawless - perfectly invisible in 2WD, reliable as a chisel in 4WD. I was excited to get it installed into the new housing.
The install went perfectly, I spent a few hours swapping the front axle into my TJ and filled it up with oil. Excited, I fired it up and started to back out of the driveway for the satisfying test drive. But as soon as I turned the steering wheel, my worst fears came true. POP CLANK click click BANG BANG POP - while the steering wheel jerked in my hands. Something was definately amiss in the front end. I immediately pulled the jeep forward and went to work on tearing the axle apart again. Watching the locker work with the diff cover off made the problem obvious. There wasn't enough clearance between the drivers and it couldn't fully disengage. So, I disassembled it and removed the thrust washers to loosen things up a bit. After fully reassembling it, and anticipating my success, I went for another test run. This time I made almost a full 10 feet before I witnessed a perfect reenactment of the cacophony described above. Now I was getting angry.
Though frustrated, I once again began the long process of draining the diff, removing the unit bearings, brakes, shafts, diff cover, bearing caps, and carrier. I measured the clearance between the 2 drivers and compared it with some specs I found online. I now had too much clearance. So I replaced one of the shims and reassembled it. This time, the clearance was only 0.003" from perfect. "Third time's a charm", I was thinking as I cranked over the 4 liter. Much to my dismay, I was again greeted by the sounds of self destruction coming from my front diff. Pulling back into the driveway, I realized it was rapidly approaching midnight, and I still had 45 minutes of mess in the driveway. I decided to give in to frustration, and cleaned up the mess before going off to bed.
Monday, I started again on the Jeep as soon as I was home from work. I took the entire diff apart for the 4th time in 3 days. By now the job was becoming second nature. I knew the habits of every bolt and pin, and all of the tools I needed were already laid out and in order. "Yeah, I've got this locker by the nuts now." I thought. Much to my surprise, I found that one of the thrust washers from the original side gears had stowed away in the carrier, firmly glued in place by some old dark hypoid gear lube. Knowing that I had found my cluprit, I breathed a sigh of relief and reassembled the axle with gusto. I was really looking forward to having some success, as I still had a sizeable list of other things to get done. Once again, my worst nightmare came true. Kerrrblamm! POP! Claynnng! SNAPPOP! were the words my locker spoke to me that afternoon. Not knowing what else to do, I popped off the diff cover and had a look inside. Apparently, the passenger axle was still not ratcheting properly and was instead binding and wreaking havoc. Frustrated, I removed the shim on only that side and reassembled the diff for the 5th time in 3 days, but to no avail. The same results just kept surfacing.
Desperate for help, I asked the advice of you knowledgeable members. Ryan and Jeremy both assured me that they had similar problems of their own in the past, and that a simple set of heavy duty springs had been the miracle pill for their ills. So I called around to about every 4x4 shop I could think of, and finally found that Six States in SLC. However, I couldn't find time to get down there until Saturday morning. I drove the hour down and hour back to buy a tiny little baggy of parts for $7. It seemed like a simple cure for the magnitude of problems I'd been having.
Truly, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was tear into the axle for the sixth time in as many days. But I now had a recipe for success! Armed with a little plastic baggy and a little determination, I went to work. After zipping through the entire process of draining, disassembling, reassembling, and refilling the axle in a mere 45 minutes (I really have this down to a fine art now) I was ready to try out my newly locked TJ in some dirt piles at the end of the street. But, my perpetually bad luck would not be beaten this time. The locker was no different than the previous 5 attempts. It was so horrible it could not even be driven around the neighborhood, even with my miracle springs installed.
Well, I'd had enough. Actually, I'd had waaay more than enough and was ready to hit something or burn the jeep to the ground. This locker was going to be ground to powder with my bench grinder so that it would never haunt another living soul. But first, I thought I'd toss in the original spider/ side gears and at least get my wife's daily driver back on the road. It was easy by now - this being the 7th time I'd been through it, and I had it all back together in less than 30 minutes. However, when I went to push the right side axle shaft into the diff, it was going in pretty hard. I tried to rotate it and get the splines aligned better, but it wouldn't rotate smoothly. It felt like there was some type of grit binding up the spider gears. I knew that something was seriously wrong here but couldn't figure out how all the puzzle pieces fit together. So, completely drained of motivation, I laid there in the grease and bolts and stared at my malfunctioning differential for about a half hour. Finally, the thought came to me loud and clear - "This damn housing is bent!" It all made sense now, the right side LCA mount was damaged, the right side driver was always binding up in the locker, and now the right side shaft wouldn't line up with the side gear correctly.
Hurray! I figured out what the problem was all along, after only a week, probably 12 hours of work, and no less than SEVEN times completely rebuilding a Dana 30. But now I had an even bigger problem, I had a bent axle housing and nothing to replace it with. I have a HP30 from and XJ, but it has the wrong gears and being a HP, the gears would not interchange with my LP. I also have a LP30 originally from my TJ, but it was hit in the wreck and I had already cut all the mounts off the housing and it was likely bent as well.
Finally, I gave up. I was so mad I could strangle somebody and beat their coprse. I decided not to do the Fall Fling, but certainly not for lack of effort. It seemed that fate was just against me this year. But I also knew that this was my wife's driver, and I had to fix it regardless. So, I reversed my frustration and just put it all into blind rage. No freaking piss poor quality Dana product would screw my weeklong vacation. I grabbed a pair of 20 ton bottle jacks, some chains, and a 100 lb I-beam and proceeded to put the pain on my axle. My dad couldn't resist a challenge, so we both argued, collaborated, invented, failed, succeeded and after about 4 hours of pushing 40,000 lb of force on my axle we finally got both sides to where the shafts would spin freely in the carrier. The axle was now within specs.
Last Saturday, I was considering all the things that I wanted to get done on the TJ before I head down to the big Moab event.... Fall Fling 2006. At the time, I had open diffs with 3.55's, and was running 34" tires. I knew that this needed to change. Given my past years of experience getting ready for Moab trips, I wanted to avoid the usual staying up until 4am the night before we leave because I didn't get the Jeep ready in time. This time would be different - I would be ready and relaxed at go time.
I came up with a logical list of priorities. Obviously, a change in gears and perhaps a locker install would be my first task, followed by installing my CB, rockrails, and trailer light wiring. Luckily, a good friend donated a LP D30 out of a 2000 TJ with 4.10 gears from the factory. It had a damaged passenger side LCA mount, but other than that seemed to be in pristine condition. For the rear, I ordered a set of thick Yukon 4.10's from alljeep.com complete with all new bearings and a master install kit. I was set.
With the assistance of my very skilled father, we borrowed some good tools from his shop and went to work on the rear D44. Dana axles, as most of you know, are pretty time consuming to set up gears in. I used a die grinder to make some homemade setup bearings to speed up the process, and they ended up working flawlessly. I did find that a retainer for the factory limited slip had broken and come loose, but having it gone should just lessen the effectiveness of the Trac Lok which really is marginal anyway. In about 4 hours we had everything down to good, tight tolerances and took it for a spin. I was delighted to have a smooth, quiet gear setup.
When I returned home, I went straight to work on the D30. First, I torched off the mangled LCA mount, and carefully removed a donor from an old D30 axle I had out back for parts. After a lot of grinding, torching, and MIG welding, it fit and looked great. Then I pulled the shafts, checked the joints, and began to install the locker. The Detroit EZ locker was saved from my black '88 XJ just a few months earlier. This locker had really changed my mind about lunchbox lockers, as I'd had a few problems with them in D35's before. This one had been flawless - perfectly invisible in 2WD, reliable as a chisel in 4WD. I was excited to get it installed into the new housing.
The install went perfectly, I spent a few hours swapping the front axle into my TJ and filled it up with oil. Excited, I fired it up and started to back out of the driveway for the satisfying test drive. But as soon as I turned the steering wheel, my worst fears came true. POP CLANK click click BANG BANG POP - while the steering wheel jerked in my hands. Something was definately amiss in the front end. I immediately pulled the jeep forward and went to work on tearing the axle apart again. Watching the locker work with the diff cover off made the problem obvious. There wasn't enough clearance between the drivers and it couldn't fully disengage. So, I disassembled it and removed the thrust washers to loosen things up a bit. After fully reassembling it, and anticipating my success, I went for another test run. This time I made almost a full 10 feet before I witnessed a perfect reenactment of the cacophony described above. Now I was getting angry.
Though frustrated, I once again began the long process of draining the diff, removing the unit bearings, brakes, shafts, diff cover, bearing caps, and carrier. I measured the clearance between the 2 drivers and compared it with some specs I found online. I now had too much clearance. So I replaced one of the shims and reassembled it. This time, the clearance was only 0.003" from perfect. "Third time's a charm", I was thinking as I cranked over the 4 liter. Much to my dismay, I was again greeted by the sounds of self destruction coming from my front diff. Pulling back into the driveway, I realized it was rapidly approaching midnight, and I still had 45 minutes of mess in the driveway. I decided to give in to frustration, and cleaned up the mess before going off to bed.
Monday, I started again on the Jeep as soon as I was home from work. I took the entire diff apart for the 4th time in 3 days. By now the job was becoming second nature. I knew the habits of every bolt and pin, and all of the tools I needed were already laid out and in order. "Yeah, I've got this locker by the nuts now." I thought. Much to my surprise, I found that one of the thrust washers from the original side gears had stowed away in the carrier, firmly glued in place by some old dark hypoid gear lube. Knowing that I had found my cluprit, I breathed a sigh of relief and reassembled the axle with gusto. I was really looking forward to having some success, as I still had a sizeable list of other things to get done. Once again, my worst nightmare came true. Kerrrblamm! POP! Claynnng! SNAPPOP! were the words my locker spoke to me that afternoon. Not knowing what else to do, I popped off the diff cover and had a look inside. Apparently, the passenger axle was still not ratcheting properly and was instead binding and wreaking havoc. Frustrated, I removed the shim on only that side and reassembled the diff for the 5th time in 3 days, but to no avail. The same results just kept surfacing.
Desperate for help, I asked the advice of you knowledgeable members. Ryan and Jeremy both assured me that they had similar problems of their own in the past, and that a simple set of heavy duty springs had been the miracle pill for their ills. So I called around to about every 4x4 shop I could think of, and finally found that Six States in SLC. However, I couldn't find time to get down there until Saturday morning. I drove the hour down and hour back to buy a tiny little baggy of parts for $7. It seemed like a simple cure for the magnitude of problems I'd been having.
Truly, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was tear into the axle for the sixth time in as many days. But I now had a recipe for success! Armed with a little plastic baggy and a little determination, I went to work. After zipping through the entire process of draining, disassembling, reassembling, and refilling the axle in a mere 45 minutes (I really have this down to a fine art now) I was ready to try out my newly locked TJ in some dirt piles at the end of the street. But, my perpetually bad luck would not be beaten this time. The locker was no different than the previous 5 attempts. It was so horrible it could not even be driven around the neighborhood, even with my miracle springs installed.
Well, I'd had enough. Actually, I'd had waaay more than enough and was ready to hit something or burn the jeep to the ground. This locker was going to be ground to powder with my bench grinder so that it would never haunt another living soul. But first, I thought I'd toss in the original spider/ side gears and at least get my wife's daily driver back on the road. It was easy by now - this being the 7th time I'd been through it, and I had it all back together in less than 30 minutes. However, when I went to push the right side axle shaft into the diff, it was going in pretty hard. I tried to rotate it and get the splines aligned better, but it wouldn't rotate smoothly. It felt like there was some type of grit binding up the spider gears. I knew that something was seriously wrong here but couldn't figure out how all the puzzle pieces fit together. So, completely drained of motivation, I laid there in the grease and bolts and stared at my malfunctioning differential for about a half hour. Finally, the thought came to me loud and clear - "This damn housing is bent!" It all made sense now, the right side LCA mount was damaged, the right side driver was always binding up in the locker, and now the right side shaft wouldn't line up with the side gear correctly.
Hurray! I figured out what the problem was all along, after only a week, probably 12 hours of work, and no less than SEVEN times completely rebuilding a Dana 30. But now I had an even bigger problem, I had a bent axle housing and nothing to replace it with. I have a HP30 from and XJ, but it has the wrong gears and being a HP, the gears would not interchange with my LP. I also have a LP30 originally from my TJ, but it was hit in the wreck and I had already cut all the mounts off the housing and it was likely bent as well.
Finally, I gave up. I was so mad I could strangle somebody and beat their coprse. I decided not to do the Fall Fling, but certainly not for lack of effort. It seemed that fate was just against me this year. But I also knew that this was my wife's driver, and I had to fix it regardless. So, I reversed my frustration and just put it all into blind rage. No freaking piss poor quality Dana product would screw my weeklong vacation. I grabbed a pair of 20 ton bottle jacks, some chains, and a 100 lb I-beam and proceeded to put the pain on my axle. My dad couldn't resist a challenge, so we both argued, collaborated, invented, failed, succeeded and after about 4 hours of pushing 40,000 lb of force on my axle we finally got both sides to where the shafts would spin freely in the carrier. The axle was now within specs.
