My Ford Explorer 8.8 Axle Swap

So this story starts with me jamming in our band room and missing a call from my good buddy Rylen. Rylen leaves me a message saying he needs to know where to put something but since I'm not home he says he will handle it.

I come home to find this sexy beast sitting in my garage.



I start by taking the trusty HF plasma to the sway bar and leaf perches. After a good cleanup and welding the axle tubes I end up with this.





I have to help my friend with his race truck today so updates will be later then I would have liked but duty calls. I have the spicer ds flange and the Ruffstuff 8.8 swap kit all ready for me when I get back. My plans are to get the axle set in tonight and pull it back out for paint so I can do brake lines on sunday.

Updates soon!

If you make this face while swapping in your 8.8 maybe it's time to take a step back lol

Yeah, I think I made that face some point in time during my 8.8 swap too

Enjoy that axle. It's beefy as hell

Does that face come with the faux hawk or does the faux hawk come with the face? Just checking cuz I dont want to get ripped off during my next 8.8 build.

Nice welds btw. Looking forward to the rest.

RadioShackSpecial said:

Does that face come with the faux hawk or does the faux hawk come with the face? Just checking cuz I dont want to get ripped off during my next 8.8 build.

Nice welds btw. Looking forward to the rest.

Click to expand...

The hawk is sold separately and come with no warranty expresses or implied

nice looking beads on those axle tubes I have an 8.8 sitting in my garage I'm just too lazy to get it in the jeep lol.

Been up with my buddy Rylen all night working on this and we almost have it all in

Those tires will work real nice aired down a bit!

Just woke up and now I'm about to try and get the brake lines figured out.

Here is what it looked like right before we set it in.

So the axle is in and running good. We ended up just running the factory ford 8.8 soft line to the jeeps hard line(no adapter needed!). I just cut the xj e-brake lines and ran them over the arms on the caliper then clamped them with cable clamps. Pictures of the brake stuff tomorrow when it is light.


Here is my shock and bump setup on the very nice Ruffstuff u-bolt plates.

The axle in it's new home.


I ran the jeep on the freeway and checked my speed with a gps... Right on! My speedo for a change is accurate. The jeep has much better power all around with the 4.10s, now just to rebuild that limited slip...

So here is a shot of the brake lines. Kinda of a clustershag but they work and it was cheap.


Here I have the suspension pretty close to full droop and the stock 8.8 soft line still have room for a couple more inches down travel.


Here is the e-brake setup using the factory xj lines that I cut the ends off, wrapped around the 8.8 e-brake lever, and then clamped with cable clamps.


My driveshaft with a hackntap, 4.5" leafs, and an xj front dshaft I maybe could have it a bit longer. Fwiw the drivshaft is extended about 1" more then the same setup with my xj44 out back.
I just ended up using the spicer flange 2-2-1379


Here is a shot to show the width difference haha.


Just kidding but really I cannot tell a width difference between the front and back.

Sweet man going to go the same route with my comanche. Can you post up the part sources for the flanges you used to connect the pinion flange to the drive shaft?

Six states is where I got mine but I know napa can get them and I bet just about any parts store. I will highly recommend you get the ruffstuff 8.8swap kit too it is so nice and for $120 it really makes life easy. The 5/8" ubolts with the slotted ubolt plates are just a joy also.

I bought a XJ ready 8.8 (with discs and LSD) but it's good to know I can go to Napa and get the flange I need! Nice install. Looking forward to doing mine in the next few days.