Iron rock offroad inner axle sleeves

Just wondering if anyone has used them and if so how do you like them. I may be in the market for a set but not sure if I want to spend the money on something that isn't going to help. I know some of the people on here are going to say buy another axle but I'd like to stay true to the stock jeep and see what I can do with the d30 rather than building another hole rear. Thanks for the time and input.

If you're talking about the D30, they're probably helpful. A D30 can be made to work for 33-35 inch tires fairly well. I've been wheeling my stock D30 on 33s for a couple years now with no trouble. I do plan on a truss and beefier shafts soon though. Sleeving it wouldn't hurt.

If you're talking about the D35 (since you mentioned the rear) don't invest any money in it, an 8.25 swap is cheaper, stronger and so easy as to make building the D35 pointless.

just the D30, I'm going to run a lockrite and 33 inch km2's after I do the axle sleeves if I get a nice review on these I think

I think a guy here, Cal, put an external sleeve on his 30 made from 1/4" wall DOM. It was a pain in his ass, but beefy as hell once installed. IRO tubes are 1/4 wall but should fit much more easily than going over the outside surface.

You'd have 2.5" diameter 1/2" wall axle tubes with the IRO kit. That is ~Dana 60 territory, strength wise. Of course, your R&P / shafts / joints aren't anywhere in that ballpark...

I think you'd be better off taking that 109 bucks and putting it towards shafts, unless you already have them and need to upgrade housing strength.

So these just press down inside the tubes? Interesting.

from what I gather you pull the axle shafts out slide these in and weld them into the stock axle tube and it is supposed to stop the axle from flexing and twisting.not sure if you weld inside bythe carrier or not but the outside is a must. http://www.ironrockoffroad.com/Merc...en=PROD&Store_Code=IROR&Product_Code=IR-SIASK

if it were me i would pull the shaft and drill a few holes in the tube to do some plug welds along the sleeve

yossarian19 said:

I think a guy here, Cal, put an external sleeve on his 30 made from 1/4" wall DOM. It was a pain in his ass, but beefy as hell once installed. IRO tubes are 1/4 wall but should fit much more easily than going over the outside surface.

You'd have 2.5" diameter 1/2" wall axle tubes with the IRO kit. That is ~Dana 60 territory, strength wise. Of course, your R&P / shafts / joints aren't anywhere in that ballpark...

I think you'd be better off taking that 109 bucks and putting it towards shafts, unless you already have them and need to upgrade housing strength.

Click to expand...

I would not do an internal sleeve, that gets to be a little tight, and would be very difficult to do a good job welding.

Mine was sleeved, and truss'd. If I were going to do it again, I'd skip the sleeve, do the TNT truss and be done with it (was not available at the time).

30's do sometimes bend, also sometimes the ring gear deflects and breaks teeth. A good truss, welded properly to the tubes *and* the third member, can more or less fix both of those problems.

I beat the snot out of my 30 for several years on 35's, never broke a thing (did wear out a few balljoints).

Sleeving an axle internally adds a bunch of weight without adding alot of strength. This is from an engineer friend of mine. The lever arm is extremely small with an internal sleeve. A truss has alot more leverage over the axle tube and is therefore much stronger. It is my opinion that a D30 can be built to handle 35's fairly reliably without breaking the bank if you can fab your own stuff. If you don't do fab work, there are some very good truss kits available.

Cal, did you use any special technique to weld to the center section of the D30? I bought the Ballistic Fab truss, but all I have at my disposal now is a Hobart 140. Friends have a 220V welder if that's necessary.

sunburned said:

Cal, did you use any special technique to weld to the center section of the D30? I bought the Ballistic Fab truss, but all I have at my disposal now is a Hobart 140. Friends have a 220V welder if that's necessary.

Click to expand...

yes. i traded a set of yukon alloy shafts to a professional welder friend of mine for all of the fab and welding on the housing.

it was welded with nickle stick, preheated with a torch and slow cooled in a 40 amp electric blanket.

yossarian19 said:

I think a guy here, Cal, put an external sleeve on his 30 made from 1/4" wall DOM. It was a pain in his ass, but beefy as hell once installed. IRO tubes are 1/4 wall but should fit much more easily than going over the outside surface.

You'd have 2.75" diameter 1/2" wall axle tubes with the IRO kit. That is ~Dana 60 territory, strength wise. Of course, your R&P / shafts / joints aren't anywhere in that ballpark...

I think you'd be better off taking that 109 bucks and putting it towards shafts, unless you already have them and need to upgrade housing strength.

Click to expand...

The wall thickness is dana 60 (and 44HD) territory, but the strength is not:

jeeperjohn said:

Sleeving an axle internally adds a bunch of weight without adding alot of strength. This is from an engineer friend of mine. The lever arm is extremely small with an internal sleeve. A truss has alot more leverage over the axle tube and is therefore much stronger. It is my opinion that a D30 can be built to handle 35's fairly reliably without breaking the bank if you can fab your own stuff. If you don't do fab work, there are some very good truss kits available.

Click to expand...

... for this reason. The technical term is "second moment of area" or "area moment of inertia", per a friend of mine, not leverage/lever arm, but you are dead on the money with what you're saying otherwise.

Basically, the further out from the centerline of the tube you put the metal (even the same thickness) the stronger it will be. For instance making a 1/2" diameter 1/4" wall tube (which isn't really a tube, since the hole down the middle would be 0" diameter) is obviously very weak, I can bend it with a vise and a hammer. But a 3" diameter 1/4" wall tube is more than strong enough for damn near any cage or suspension link.

If you sleeve the inside of a d30 tube, you end up with a 2.75" diameter 1/2" wall tube (that isn't really quite as strong as true 1/2" wall) while if you sleeve the outside, you end up with a 3.25" diameter 1/2" wall tube, which is the same size as a ford 8.8 tube but even thicker wall.

I'd put a truss on the 30 well before I would spend the time and money sleeving the tubes, just looking at it from an engineering standpoint.

I have both inserts and a truss. The key to an internal tsleeves in the amount of plug welds. They need to be connected to the point that they resist bending motions together. Not bend the first one and then bend the second one. My garage ceiling told me 35's was the limit so I dumped a ton of cash into hp30 lockers,gears and chromo shafts.
If you are planning to run a 30 for a long time why would not add all the beef you can to the axle. It is not like you are going to notice an extra 30lbs of steel.
Sure an external sleeve is stronger but a truss is stronger still and half to work to fabricate. It makes no sense to me. I had a waggy 44 I sold before I decided to stick with the 30.
The idea of having to fab up new 4 link brackets just to sleeve a 30 is pointless to me. A mild truss and internal tube sleeves and you are not going to bend the tubes.

Side note, my original tube sleeves I had made by a local shop. They screwed them up and made them too small so I got a refund and bought from ironrock. I had polished the inside of my tubes with a wire wheel on a long rod but the ironrock tubes could have been made a little larger, they slid right in with just a mild tap from a hammer.

So you have to plug weld them not weld the ends

You weld the ends too, I just didn't posted a picture of it all done.

I think you'd be much better off to weld some 1/4" wall half tube to the bottom of the axle tubes. You'd get more strength with about the same weight.