The Future Holds:

The Details

I've had a terrible time finding front axle pieces. The junk yards around Dallas were either picked clean, or the housings had their outer ends torched off (this includes TTB setups). I finally found one in the remains of a 1971 F-100. It was in the very back corner of the yard, sitting on top of the remaining carcass of a minivan, behind three other rows of trucks that I had to squeeze thru kind of sideways. I honestly think the yard forgot it was there. It took me two days to get the axle off the truck, as I'm a Northwester by birth, and heat over 100 degrees Farenheit makes me really sick. Actually, all my axle part and suspension purchases at the junkyards have required two trips, due to my getting sick from the heat. Later, with some help on the second trip, I pulled the rear axle out of the same truck.

I started by building a kind of frame out of angle iron to hold the axle. It's just two X's, smaller at the top, that I made by cutting some notches in some short lengths of angle iron and fitting them together (they stayed together on their own before I welded them), then put the bottoms of them into a rectangular frame I made of more angle iron. The end result looks kinda like an upside-down picnic table. I was going to put casters on this frame, but it slides so easy on the concrete floor of the garage, that I haven't bothered with them. I stripped the front axle down, all except the pinion gear. The axle is a high-pinion model (score!) with 4.09 gears (the ratio I wanted) that look pretty new (double score!). The differential is open, but I'll deal with that later. The code on the axle, C5, is for a 4.09 ratio. That code was only used in 1971, so the numbers match the truck. The axle had drum brakes (but was missing the drums, a universal theme around Dallas), and was missing the dial part of one of the Spicer locking hubs. I pulled the spindles, brakes, and knuckles off the axle, and cleaned everything up. Some kind of sealant that looks like used Big Red chewing gum was used to goo the differential cover back on (half of the old gasket had been left on). Whatever it is, it doesn't hold up to gear oil, so the red goo came off pretty easy. I made my own tool to clean the rust out of the tubes (Scotch Brite pad in a slot in the end of a bar that I mounted in my 1/2" electric drill). Worked real well. I ground off the triangular suspension brackets that Ford uses, as well as the sway bar mount. I then used a wire and a rag to drag Hammerite paint thru the tubes to prevent further rust. It was really messy, but it worked great. I replaced the seals, and put the differential back in. I used a new gasket and proper gasket sealer to reinstall the cover, after I painted everything with more Hammerite.

To keep the gears from rusting, I put some gear oil in the front diff; not enough to run out of the axle tubes, however. When I think about it, I rotate the pinion a few times to keep the gears lubed. I don't know if this really does much, but it makes me feel better. Anyhow, I had the axle sitting on the axle frame, with the pinion pointed almost straight down, and found that the gear lube was running out the seal in a small but constant stream. Cute. The seal was toasted. I pulled the pinion yoke off, and found that the rubber part of the seal was virtually non-existant. After yet another trip to the parts store (I'm there at least once a week for various things), I had the dilemma of putting the new seal back in; it's thin, easy to bend, and has to fit around the pinion that's still sticking out of the differential. I made my own tool by taking a large woodboring bit and putting a hole in a block of wood. I then slipped the block over the pinion. A few taps on the wood with a hammer, and the seal seated perfectly and without damage.

I really wanted disk brakes on the front, so I went back to the junkyards. I was looking at doing the Chevy-spindle-and-caliper/caliper-bracket-with-Ford-rotors-and-hubs thing on the drum brake knuckles, but found the parts for another solution.

Before I go further, let me explain some things I've not seen on any web pages yet.

Some folks may be wondering the same thing I was about this swap. Namely, "why use the Chevy parts on the Ford knuckles? Won't Ford parts fit?"

The reason for the Chevy pieces is that the Chevy spindle and caliper brackets have the same evenly-spaced six-bolt pattern as the Ford drum brake knuckles. The Ford disk brake knuckles and spindles use a five-bolt pattern (and the bolts aren't evenly spaced), so using the Ford parts would require a knuckle swap (and thus a few more $$$). You can't use the Ford drum brake spindle with the Chevy disk brake caliper, because the Ford spindle is too short (the disk brake caliper bracket is thicker than the drum brake backing plate by nearly half an inch). If you used the Ford drum brake spindle with the Chevy caliper bracket, there's not enough of the spindle sticking thru the hub assembly to be able to get last spindle nut on. (Just for the record, I've heard that Scout Dana 44 drum brake knuckles use the same 5-bolt pattern as the Ford disk brake knuckles. If you can confirm or deny this, please email me. I do know for sure, however, that Scout Dana 44 disk brake knuckles and spindles are an 8-bolt pattern.) And, if that's not enough, the Dana 44's found in 3/4 ton trucks typically (but not always) use an 8-bolt spindle pattern also.

Ford TTB setups use the same spindle, caliper, rotor, hub, and even ball joints as the Ford solid-axle setup, but there's no separate caliper bracket (the caliper mount is cast into the knuckle), and the knuckle itself is about an inch too wide at the ball joints to fit the solid-axle yokes.

Also, a lot of folks use the Chevy or Full-Sized Jeep knuckles that are flat on the top. These allow them to mount a steering arm on top of the knuckles and put the steering linkage up high. This is a great solution if you have a spring-over-axle setup on the front.

... and now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Anyhow, I couldn't find the Chevy parts (everything is stripped of brake parts in the Dallas yards), but I did find a 1979 Bronco frame (including the front axle) sitting at the back of the yard, on top of a stripped-out van. It took me two days to get knuckles, spindles, and caliper mounts. (Anybody else noticing a couple of on-going themes here?) The disks and hubs were shot (I can get new pretty inexpensively), one of the Warn locking hubs was gone, the other was broken, and they wanted $35 each for the rusted brake calipers. Since I can get rebuilt calipers for $17 from the parts store, including the core charge, I passed on the ones from the junkyard.

Assembling the front axle.

As expected, the ball joints in the "new" steering knuckles weren't in very good shape. Okay, they were in lousy shape. I got quotes of $85 or more for the labor only to have someone else press in new joints. I'd already removed the old ones with a hammer and a punch, and had a hard time swallowing this price. After looking around thru the pile of catalogs I have at home (hey, if it's a free catalog of tools or parts, I have no problem requesting it), I finally found a ball joint tool set for $40 at Harbor Freight. I figured I could break it, buy another, and still come out ahead. Luckily, Harbor Freight has a store that's literally right down the street from my house. They had three of these sets in stock. I bought one, and it worked great.

When you get a set of ball joints for a Dana 44 front axle, there's a couple-few things to watch when installing the knuckle onto the axle after putting in the new ball joints. First, remove the adjusting collar in the top of the axle yoke (it's the piece that the shaft of the upper ball joint will pass thru). A pair of needle-nose pliers, with one jaw in each of two notches in this piece, worked well. I was surprised at how easy it came out. Put the new sleeve in, but not all the way. Leave a couple of threads exposed on the top of the axle yoke. This sleeve will be adjusted later, but it's needed now to keep the upper ball joint lined up when the knuckle is installed. The next step is easy; just install the knuckle by putting the shafts of the ball joints thru their respective holes. On the lower ball joint, there's a special "self-torquing" nut. Make sure you use it, and that you put it on the right way. It's kinda obvious (flat side down) as long as you think about it. Since my situation required 80 ft-lbs of torque, and the tapered center shaft of the ball joint started rotating at about 20 ft-lbs, I had to come up with a way to hold the shaft still. What I did was to take one of the cylinders out of the ball joint tool kit I have, placed it under the knuckle (around the end of the ball joint), and put a jack under it. With a little pressure from the jack, the ball joint shaft seated just tight enough to let me torque the nut.

The next step is to use a special socket to torque down the adjusting sleeve for the top ball joint. It looks like a deep socket with four little square teeth on the bottom. I had to special order this from Snap-On. Once it arrived, I tried to torque the sleeve down to 50 ft-lbs, but I didn't get that far before the sleeve got so deep that the ball joint stud hit the inside of the socket. I was doing it in steps, so I got somewhere between 30 and 40 ft-lbs. I'll be leaving it there for now. I then put on the upper ball joint castle nut and cotter pin. After that, I installed the axle shafts, then the spindles.

The next parts to go onto the front axle were the parts often called the "outers"; this is is the rotating hub, the disk (held to the hub by the press-fit of the wheel studs), the wheel bearings, races, and the seal. For these critical parts, I decided to purchase new, instead of used. Even if I had gone with used parts, I think it's a bad idea to use used bearings, so those would have been new anyway, as well as their matching races and the seal. Then, the brake disk would've been questionable, and with how cheap those are, buying a new one is a good idea. Replacing the disk means replacing the studs... so by the time all that's done, the only used part in the system would've been the hub, anyway.

I lucked out, and the parts store I went to was able to order the entire set of hub/disk/stud/races already put together, and for less than the separate parts. One thing nice about ordering parts for a Dana 44 is that since this axle was used for so many years, parts for them are very common and easy to get brand new. Many of the parts, such as the bearings, races, seals, and locking hubs, are the same regardless of the brand of truck the axle came in. The only reason the hubs and disks differ is because of the wheel bolt pattern is manufacturer specific. In my case, there were 21 model years of Ford trucks that used the same parts I bought. One thing I really like about using parts that are this common, is that if something, for example, a wheel bearing, breaks down on me when I'm away from home, most any mom-and-pop parts store in whatever little town I'm in will probably have that bearing in stock. Also, the more common the part, the cheaper it is.

While I was at it, I purchased new spindle nut kits for the front axle. This is the two nuts and the special washer that goes in between.

Now, how does all this stuff go together?

First, load up the bearings with a high-quality, high-temperature wheel bearing grease. This stuff is cheap (only a couple-three bucks for more than you'll probably ever need), so spend the extra dime and get the really good stuff. Everyone has their own way of loading up the bearings. The way I personally do it is to get a big gob of the grease on my finger, and put a thick layer around the outside of the bearing, trying to rub it into the rollers. Then, I grab the inside of the bearing with one hand, and press the outside against the palm of my other hand, and rotate the bearing against my hand, working the grease deep into the rollers. There's a bit of space between the roller cage and the center of the bearing, where I can watch and see how the grease is getting in. Once the grease starts to come out the sides of the bearing, it's full.

I then put the inner bearing into the back of the hub assembly, and installed the seal. I find that a rubber-faced hammer and a lot of little taps works well. Then, I slid the hub assembly over the spindle, and slid the outer bearing over the end of the spindle and into the hub as far as I could push it with my fingers.

Next, the first spindle nut goes on. This is the one with the little pin on it. The nut goes on in such a way that the pin sticks out. Using a spindle nut socket (very necessary to do this right), I cranked the nut on with one hand and turned the hub unit with the other, to help seat the bearings. Once the nut torqued to 50 ft-lbs (using a torque wrench, not guessing), I spun the hub assembly all the way around a few times, in both directions. At this point, it's kinda stiff, which is fine. Then, I backed off the nut about 60 degrees, and torqued it back again, this time to 35 ft-lbs. Next, the washer went on. The inside of the washer has a key, or square bump, on it. This goes into a groove cut into the spindle. On my spindles, this groove is on the bottom. There are several holes drilled into the washer. I checked to see which hole was closest to the pin on the nut I had just installed, and then adjusted the nut back or forth just a tiny bit to get the pin to line up. Once one of the holes in the washer would slide over the little pin, I installed the second spindle nut, and torqued it to 50 ft-lbs.

Other than purchasing and installing the locking hubs, that's all there is to it.

Now, some folks won't go the pre-assemble route that I did this time. (I've gone the full do-it-yourself method several times.) Here's a trick to getting the races and wheel studs installed: put 'em in a sandwich bag (to keep of the frost that might later cause rust) and put 'em in the freezer for a couple of hours.

Seriously.

Then, while those parts are shrinking down, either set the hub and disk rotor out on the hot concrete driveway in the sun (the Texas method), or, warm 'em up with a propane torch, or in the oven if your significant other is out (the Washington method) until your spit just starts to sizzle on 'em. The holes on the hub and rotor will expand with the heat, while the races and studs will shrink down, making the assembly much easier. Once the parts are together and on the vehicle, they'll always be at the same temperature, which is why they won't fall apart from temperature changes later.

(This trick of heating the outside part and cooling the inside part works great for lots of other assemblies, such as putting transmission gears onto the shafts, so it's worth keeping in mind.)

All that's left for the front axle to be complete is for me to purchase locking hubs (once again, common and inexpensive for a Dana 44), and then work out the drag link and tie rod.

The rear axle is a Ford 9". Now, I'm actually on my second Ford 9" axle for this project.

The first rear axle I had came out of the same truck as the front axle. Like the front, this one was missing the brake drums, along with a couple of minor brake parts. I stripped it down, finding more Big Red stuffed behind the retainer plates. (It had dripped out and gooed up some of the brake parts) and in the third-member-to-housing area. The axle bearings turned out to be shot (as in, one of them was all broken open and has lost a few rollers), the seals had been removed and never replaced, but the axle shafts themselves were these big, beefy 31-spline units (score!, or so I thought at the time). I couldn't find any tags or stampings, so I don't know if the axle assembly was original to the truck. What makes me wonder a bit, is that the (rusted) gear set is a 3.25:1 ratio, not 4.11:1 as I would've expected. (Negative score.)

3.25:1 gears. Bummer.

Like I did on the front axle, I ground off all of the brackets (spring pads, shock mounts), and stripped off the rust and paint. To get rid of the grease and grit and green oil-and-water slime, I took the housing down to the quarter-activated car wash and blasted their engine cleaning solution thru it. Worked really well, especially for only two bucks.

Oh, and before I forget, I decided that I really don't want to cut the housings down. For stuff that can break under hard use (like axle shafts), I prefer staying with standard pieces that I can pick up easily anywhere.

After grinding on the bearing retainers for the axle shafts, I removed the bearings (or, in the case of the left-hand shaft, what was left of the bearing), and took the shafts down to the parts store to get new bearings and retainers pressed on (the store I go to here in Washington has a machine shop). The machinist couldn't get a bearing to stay on the left-hand axle shaft. He also measured and inspected the splines, and pronounced the right shaft as junk, once the part of the splines that fit in the side gear of the center section broke loose from the shaft.

Well, I guess I now have a couple of five-bolt flanges to use on the spare tire carrier I'm going to build.

Okay, so on this axle, the gears are wrong, the axle shafts are toast, I have no bearings or seals, the carrier bearings are looking kinda toasted (I'd replace 'em anyway, just to be safe), and the center of the axle housing has a bad weld that someone did to fix a 4-inch crack (this came to light after all the cleaning and paint stripping work), and the housing itself is of the older/weaker design. Most all of this came to light after I took the axle apart. Oh, and let's not forget that the axle came without some of the brake parts, and that the backing plates are worn thru at the points where the brake shoes ride. That leaves, what, just the differential itself (which I want to replace with a locker) and the body of the third member (which I haven't inspected too closely yet, but is of the weakest of the Ford designs) as possible good parts?

Guess it's time to find another rear axle.

Now that I'm back in Washington State, the Land Of The Rusty Truck, drivetrain parts are cheaper than they were in Dallas. (Of course, rust-free body parts up here are nearly non-existant, and mondo expensive when they can be found.) I really wanted to get the Jeep to the point where it could be rolled around, so I went out one day looking for a new rear axle. I looked for three different axles, a Ford 9", a Ford 8.8", or a Dana 60 axle, preferably with a 4.10:1 gear ratio.

Why a Dana? Dana makes great gears. Dana may make the best gears in the business. As an example, on my parents' motorhome, an improperly installed differential cover gasket leaked all the fluid out of the rear axle. One of the side bearings on the differential dried up and broke up into metal powder, allowing the differential to cant to one side, running the gears crooked and full of metal grit for who knows how many thousands of miles after the gasket problem had been fixed. After all of this, Dad had to have all the bearings and seals replaced, as well as have the grit cleaned out of everything, but gears are still just fine. I've heard other first-hand stories along the same lines.

The only snag with a Dana 60 axle would be that there's very few that ever came with a bolt pattern other than the 8-on-6.5" pattern.

Okay, I know a lot of people don't like the Ford 8.8" axle real well. Unlike the 9", it's of the Salisbury design, like all the Dana axles. However, the outer end parts swap around with the 9", and some even use the same kind of retainer (some use C-clips). Yes, the 8.8" isn't quite as strong as either the 9" or Dana 60, but it is stronger than a Dana 44, which would be strong enough for my application. The 8.8" is easy to find, as it became the replacement for the 9", and is still being produced today.

Well, I found a lot of axles that would've worked, had they been complete. I found dozens of axles, but all of them were missing a shaft or two, or the center section, or all three. Then, I found this one kind of strange little yard that's been there forever, yet for some weird reason doesn't have any vehicles there. All of the parts are neatly organized on racks and on shelves. (For those of you that aren't aware; the more sophisticated, computerized, and organized the yard, the higher the prices.) However, for about the same money that everyone else wanted, I got this great 9" axle with brand-new brakes, including freshly machined drums and good emergency brake cables. Okay, the gears still need to be replaced, as they're currently 3.00:1, but that's one of those things I can leave until I find a really great deal. This axle is out of a 1976 F-150, and has the thick, strong later-style housing and the third member is of the strong, extra-ribbed design.

Oh, and there's one other thing to be aware of with this later-style 9" axle; the outside diameter of the tube is 3-1/4", versus the 3" of the earlier style. This isn't much, but it does require different U-bolts, spring plates, and axle/spring mounts.