Grandpa X
Last year a few of us did a trail called Carnage BV. Needless to say the weak link was found in a few vehicles. Kevin broke his driver side radius arm free from the axle. The mounts to this arm are welded to the cast housing on a Waggy Dana 44. Kevin got to brain storming on how to prevent this from happening again! A guy could probably encompass (Wrap) the cast area of the axle with plate and weld the radius arm mounts back on to the plated area. This would probably work just fine! However I had an extra HP44 housing from the old red pathfinder laying in a pile.
This axle was one of the units that I had narrowed to 63 in wide. What a guy does is cut 2 inches off the long side of a Ford axle, then burn the C back into place. This makes the long side the same length as a Waggy! With the short side still Ford length, the axle becomes a 63 wide unit.
There are a few things that are sweet about this modified housing:
The shaft lengths are still OEM units! So new shafts can be ordered without a custom cut unit.
The differential ends up closer to the oil pan. Thus allowing the drivers side radius arm mount to be welded to tube.
The tubes on this model of Ford axle are 1/2 inch wall. Can you say BEEF!!!!
The axle is 63 wide... Say goodbye to the wheel spacers!!!!
It is a high pinion unit.. thus lifting the drive-shaft further out of harms way.
However there are a couple downfalls!
This is a high pinion! So the crossmemeber that normally has a sway bar in it has to be removed or modified! Say goodbye to the sway-bar!
The drive-shaft is higher and will hit the cat! So say goodbye to secondary cats...
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Kevin has lifted his rig enough to max out the caster adjusters on the Calmini arms. He decided to fix that with new adjustable upper links that we fabbed up.