XJ D44 and ABS

OK, I'm trying to do some forward financial planning on next year's planned XJ upgrades. The suspension and skid plates are at the top of the list. But for the second half of the year, I'd like to go to 4.10 XJ D44s front and rear.

My question: if I convert to these axles, can I retain the ABS already on my '01 Sport? This is something I've come to really appreciate having and would much prefer to not have to go to a regular booster-based system, both for safety and financial reasons.

If it's not possible to retain it with that axle, would a TJ D44 converted to SOA enable the ABS to be retained? I did some searching on this, but couldn't find a direct answer.

The quick awnser is no.TJ's with D44's don't get ABS.I have researched this too.I have my 44 rear already but no way to keep the ABS.I plan on eliminating the ABS.All you have to do is remove the sensors and control unit,then replace the hard lines between the master and prop valve.

xjspyder said:

The quick awnser is no.TJ's with D44's don't get ABS.I have researched this too.I have my 44 rear already but no way to keep the ABS.

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Damn. That's a bummer. Out of curiosity, what prevents the ABS from being retained?

I plan on eliminating the ABS.All you have to do is remove the sensors and control unit,then replace the hard lines between the master and prop valve.

Click to expand...

Yeah... I was just hoping for a 'best of both worlds' scenario. Oh well.

The ABS system relies on tone rings and sensors at each wheel to relay wheel speed information to the computer, which is how wheel lock up is detected. The standard D44 does not have provisions for the rings to be located on the axle shafts. I know of one person who had a custom D44 built to accomodate the ABS on his TJ, and the axle builder said it was the biggest PITA and he'd never do it again.

As everyone else said, it can be done, but it is not easy.

With that said, I'm in the process of doing the same thing myself. (well I spent a lot of time working over the summer on it and am now back at school without access to my d44 or tools). So I'll share my experiences with it.

Keep in mind I'm converting to disks at the same time (using crown vic parts).

I brought the dana 44 shafts and Dana 35 shafts into a local auto shop to get the bearings pressed off and the tone rings off of the 35.

Brought the 44 shafts and tone rings to a local machine shop (and lucky me, the guy was a big drag racing fan, knew a lot about axles). He machined out the center of the tone rings to 2" diameter, and LIGHTLY machined and radiused the area where the tone rings get pressed onto the shaft. That was just because it's a very rough and unever spot, and otherwise impossible to mount the tone rings.

The tone rings were machined well so i could tap them in place myself, and I got the bearings and other stuff pressed back on. Unlike three of the three auto shops I talked to in the process of doing this, the owner of the machine shop told me the tone rings are NOT "pot metal" and were easy to machine without worry about breaking. The machining cost me $50, which completely shocked me, as I thought it'd be far more expensive.

The only other thing to worry about other than getting the tone rings in place is to mount the sensors in a position where they can read the tone rings.

Let me tell you this is NOT easy as there is very little room, and of course the crown vic parts didn't have a mount for the sensors. I never finished building a mount, but I did manage to cut/drill enouhg of the backing plate out that I'm ready to build a mount and the sensor WILL work. This is how far I got before I had to go back to college.

In hindsight there are a couple of things I'd consider doing differently. 1) I think the amount of work necessary to use the crown vic brake parts is similar to mounting ZJ disk brakes. With that in mind, ZJ disks have some provisions for ABS sensors, and although they may still not line up perfectly, it'd probably take less modification than my poor crown vic backing plates have put up with. 2) I am planning to mount the ABS sensor in the same orientation as a stock ZJ or XJ. One possibilty I thought of after doing all the cutting on the backing plate is to mount the sensors rotated 90 degrees. This might not make a lot of sense right now, but the ABS sensors are tall, and have to fit in a very tight space, with a wire that doesn't felx well. I think rotating the sensor would help the sensor fit better, make it eaiser to mount, and help clear the wire a lot better.

I'm not sure how adding ABS to the stock drums would work, since almost every part of my 44s drums were shot, I decided to switch to disks.

So to sum this up, you need 2 things for ABS, mount the tone rings, and mount the sensors properly to read the tone rings. Both are possible to do, but the sensors themselves are not easy. I wouldn't change a thing with the way my tone rings are setup, but I'd think twice about the crown vic parts and sensor mounting.

I'd take pictures for you, but as I said earlier I don't have access to the 44 for about 2 months.

I know this is a lengthy post, but I spent alot of time working on it and wanted to share my experience (especially since everyone I talked to said don't bother with ABS, bah to you ).

~Brian

You might be able to pull off ABS if you get a rear ford 8.8. It's not directly compatible, but someone got it to work on a grand cherokee when upgrading from a Dana 35C. I'm going to look into this a little more later this week when my 8.8 arrives.

from http://members.cox.net/rough-riders/tech_page/ford8.8/ford8_8.html

However, Tom Zehrbach has gotten the ABS to work when he put a Ford 8.8 under his Grand Cherokee. Some of his comments: "I got the ABS to work, but it was a huge pain. The shoulders of the Ford shafts (where the tone rings press on) are actually smaller than the shoulders of the Dana shafts. Unfortunately, the difference is too small for a sleeve, so you have to bore out the tone ring a bit so that a sleeve can be fabricated and fit between the ring and the shaft. With the tone ring on the shaft, the axle tube is 1/8" too long, you can't get the shaft in far enough to slip the C-clip in. A grinder fixes that problem. You also have to grind out an area on the flange for the tone ring sensor."

Thanks for the thorough explanation, Brian; lots of good information there, and presented very well.

You may want to keep in mind when swapping Rings that your ABS computer is assuming a given number of Teeth on the ring. If the New ring has a different number the ABS will not work as designed. The more the new count is different from the old count the more the likely the problem is to be noticeable.

One other thing I would throw out FYI is that the sensor used in these is a hall cell and they will read almost any ferrous metal that is there and then gone.

Thanks for the pointers, folks. I think the Ford 8.8 idea is a good one, but I'm trying to retain single-manufacturer parts compatibility/availabilty as a component of all this, so probably won't go that route.

When I'm closer to the time, I'll pull the shafts on the D35 and compare them to those on the 44. It's running through my head that this might be doable, but I can kinda see why it could be a complete pain. Thanks again for the info.