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Dana 30 upgrades

DBenz

NAXJA Forum User
Hey guys,

I've got a hp d30 under my jeep with a crane diff cover and a hp d30 in the backyard with 4.56s. What are some common upgrades that would be worth my time? i did some searching...came up with the obvious locker, regear, WJ knuckles (?).

What would/did you guys do to yours?

So far the one in the yard has the 4.56 gears, open carrier, and some custom LCA skids. What about some nice steering set ups? truss? BPE? etc? Thanks

There she is:

n1192350203_30035158_1839.jpg


In backgorund:
n1192350203_30035156_1267.jpg
 
id truss up at least the pass side upper control arm mount, if not the whole thing from UCA mount to UCA mount. stuff a lunchbox locker in there, maybe make up some custom knuckle to knuckle steering wiht some tube thne just swap it under ur rig and have some fun
 
What do you intend to use it for? Rock, mud, snow, Daily driver?
Tire size? 33's are great with 4.56 gears.
With 33's you won't need to do too much upgrading unless you are hard on it. Stock shafts will even work if you don't run in big rocks.
 
get some alloy shafts and ctms. i ran the tera flex knuckles and liked it alot. buy a snap-on reamer and a right hand drive drag link for a in expensive semi high steer setup.
 
I took my knuckles off, and ground it down to clean tube with no bracketry.

Sleeved the tube in 3" OD .25" wall DOM tube, put the knuckles back on rotated for -7* caster with 11* pinion.

Had it trussed and gusseted, raised the lowers (but not too much), raised the uppers to keep proper seperation. The coil buckets are moved "in" and "back" just a bit, as my axle is pushed forward some.

RE Superflex joints for the UCA bushings.
New Spicer balljoints
WJ knuckles
3/4 Ton high-misalignment draglink ends flipped over the arm
WJ tie rod/ends flipped over the arms
1.25"x.250" dom steering links
1.25"x.250" trackbar, superflex at one end, 7/8" heim at the other end.

4.88 Precision gears
30 spline ARB locker
30 spline Alloy-USA inner shafts
CTM u-joints
30 spline Alloy-USA outer shafts
30 spline Timken unit bearings
WJ brakes
Crane diff cover
Alloy-USA tube seals

I have a warn 5x5.5 30 spline hub kit waiting for me to buy wheels and convert.

If I could do it all over again, i'd have skipped the WJ stuff. Either go with over the arm 1-ton style steering or a Tera knuckle (preffered). I had better brakes with stock XJ brakes than with the WJ calipers. I might not have bothered with the 30 spline, as now I can't use factory parts for spares (unit bearings or shafts).

I don't have good pictures of the final product handy, but heres what I have.

The housing, almost done:
CID__10-08-06_1713.jpg

CID__10-08-06_1715.jpg


This is a temp trackbar setup, while getting other things worked out - my angles are perfect now, i can get a photo tonight if you care.

DSC00001.JPG


I spent nearly $3000. How strong do you want your dana 30 to be? ;)
 
If you went through all that work to resleeve it with 3" OD, how come you didn't buy some aftermarket D44 inner knuckles and just run all D44 stuff on it? I would imagine it wouldn't of cost more than the Warn hub conversion kit you bought for it.

But I guess if you wanna dump 3k into a D30, go for it
 
Blue XJ said:
If you went through all that work to resleeve it with 3" OD, how come you didn't buy some aftermarket D44 inner knuckles and just run all D44 stuff on it? I would imagine it wouldn't of cost more than the Warn hub conversion kit you bought for it.

Well, the scope of the project was to see how far I could take the dana 30. I did consider running cj7 inner C's with 44 outers, but the offset is wrong and you have to run custom inner shafts, something I didn't want to do (at that time, I was still going to run 27 spline inners for universal spares) - not to mention dana 44 outers are 19 spline without an expensive upgrade - the dana 30 warn hub kit is much stronger than a dana 44 warn hub, even upgraded.

Later in planning, the 30 spline stuff came to happen as i got the right deal, and 30 spline stubs/unit bearings were a new option. The warn 5x5.5 kit came into play just in the last couple weeks as I got it from one of the locals free, as he is running a 9" front now - I would not have paid $900 for it. I'm doing the hub kit to change my bolt pattern, I think it will actually be weaker than the 30 spline stubs and unit bearings are.

I started off with a good plan for some simple upgrades, but as I upgraded each component, I found a new weak link with one more upgrade - and nickle and dimed myself into a freaking expensive axle. :)
 
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