IntrepidXJ's Adventure Weblog

OK…the video of my flop at The Cliffs is up! It was put together by Ritty, who had the video camera that day. Enjoy!

I picked up my new front High Pinion Dana 44 out of a 1978 F-250 today as well.

Just some pictures from my first flop…

Had a good time. here’s a few pics from The Cliffs today

Posing

took a bad line and flopped it

smashed in the fender, a-pillar, cracked the windsheild, and dented my hood.

starting it up after getting all the oil out fo the cylinders

once i was up and running again, i attacked the same obstacle, and make it

damn exhaust again

joe stuck up against a tree

Finally started moving into my new house. Here’s a few pictures of the new place

Backyard and deck

Bathroom

Bar

Workshop

My Jeep in it’s new home

More pictures here.

Longfield Super Joints got here today

no more pesky needle bearings!

Front D30 pinion yoke conversion completed yesterday

I ordered a bunch of new goodies the other day, so watch for a lot of new progress in the coming weeks

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and just finally got around to it. I’m not a huge fan of the strap style yokes, and wanted something a little stronger. I’ve heard of people drilling out their existing yokes and using the u-bolts in place of the straps, but I’m a little skeptical of that process, because those yokes were not intended to be used with u-bolts. That’s why I headed to the junkyard and managed to find two Spicer pinion yokes off of Dana 44’s that were the u-bolt style. These yokes were intended to use the u-bolts and it shows when you compare the two side by side.

For those of you wondering why I got two Dana 44 pinion yokes, it’s because the Dana 30 shares the exact same yoke as the 44, so they are interchangeable. Before we get started, I just wanted to point out that the Dana 30 and 44 do not use crush sleeves. If you have a different axle that uses crush sleeves, there is a completely different process on chainging put the yokes that I will not get into here. This how-to is shown with my Dana 30, but the Dana 44 process is exactly the same. It took me less than 30 minutes to do each axle. Here’s a picture of one of the yokes

First you have your old strap yoke.

Next remove the straps.

Once the straps are removed, drop the driveshaft out of the way, but be careful not to let the caps fall off and lose all the needle bearings. Now we have access to the pinion nut.

Now comes probably the most difficult part, if you don’t have an impact wrench…..and that is removing the pinion nut. I have an impact gun that I used to easily remove the pinion nut. Once the nut is off, you can also remove the washer.

Now you should be able to easily pull off the old pinion yoke.

Once the old yoke is removed, just replace it with the new yoke. I had to put a block of wood up against the front of the new yoke and take it all the way on with a hammer. Then you can reinstall the washer and pinion nut again, and torque to spec.

Now all you have left to do is reinstall the driveshaft using the new u-bolt kit that yu need to get from your local auto parts store.

I took both my old strap style pinion yokes and threw them into the storage box in my Jeep as trail spares, just in case I manage to break one of my new yokes on the trail.

I got my D44 U-bolt pinion yoke conversion completed today.

original (strap) yoke

new yoke on

old & new

done

I was going to do the same thing to the front D30 (they use the same pinion yoke), but the auto parts store only had one set of u-bolts….so it will have to wait until next weekend.