XJ rear drive shaft options & SYE

I am considering buying a SYE kit but I am not to keen on spending the money for a new CV driveshaft, someone told me a while ago that there are other stock CV driveshafts from trucks that will fit the XJ instead of buying a new one, but he didn't know which driveshafts would fit. Does anyone have a clue or any other ideas??????

Thanks
Peter
92' Cherokee

rusty1007 said:

I am considering buying a SYE kit but I am not to keen on spending the money for a new CV driveshaft, someone told me a while ago that there are other stock CV driveshafts from trucks that will fit the XJ instead of buying a new one, but he didn't know which driveshafts would fit. Does anyone have a clue or any other ideas??????

Thanks
Peter
92' Cherokee

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How much lift have you got? I'm running around 7" and I'm using a XJ stock front shaft. My front and rear are identical, thus interchangeable, and allows me to carry a spare that will work in either spot. I'm not 'counting on' it, as it's only been run on the street like this...not wheeled. I know there are others who have done this with success, thus my reason for doing it.

I'm at about 3" now and want to go to 5". Is the front XJ shaft big enough to handle the stress of off road use?? I do a fair bit of trail riding with my club so it will be abused a little.

i would run a front shaft that has been re-tubed (or just sleeved) with thicker tube. then you will have a nice strong rear shaft, and still have it interchaneable with the front.

of course none of this works for me since I have an MJ with a nice long rear shaft (8" and no SYE )

rusty1007 said:

I'm at about 3" now and want to go to 5". Is the front XJ shaft big enough to handle the stress of off road use?? I do a fair bit of trail riding with my club so it will be abused a little.

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That shaft will be way too long man...

Don't quote me on this, but I believe that you can get a rear drive shaft out of a Ford Ranger, 4X4, extra cab, 5 speed trans. It will have all the necessary parts to bolt up to your SYE but will probably need to have the length adjusted (+/-) some.
Willis has one of these drive shafts. Not sure if has used it yet or not, but I know he only paid a few dollars for it. HTH
Thanks,
Dan.

ECKSJAY said:

That shaft will be way too long man...

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That's what she said.

Actually, the Xj front shaft is a tad on the short side when used in the rear with a hack and tap SYE and about 5" of lift. If you were to buy a heavy duty SYE it wouldn't work as a direct bolt in as you'd have to lengthen it.

I'm one of those guys running the XJ front shaft as my rear driveshaft. So far no worries and this past week I broke all 6 leaves in my rear spring pack on Pritchett Canyon in Moab. The rear u-joint also blew apart dropping the driveshaft which procedded to dig into the rock as the truck came backwards. The truck actually was propped up a couple inches by the shaft being jammed into the rock. It survived but I should mention that I believe it was pure luck.

The good thing about the XJ front shaft is it's length is very VERY similar to an explorer front shaft and a ranger front shaft as well. Spares are plentiful and cheap to buy.

Do a search as this topic has been covered several times over the past couple years.

Thanks for all the help it's really appreciated, I did try a search on this forum for this topic but was unable to come up with anything useful. I will look at both the XJ front shaft and the Ranger shaft (Is that one the front or rear, I'm not familiar with rangers) I am going to be going to the junk yard to get a Ford 8.8 soon so I will look while I am there.

Thanks
Peter

Use this as a guide:

Spicer driveshaft specs and part numbers, listed by application.
(BEWARE, 31MB download!)
http://www.spicerdriveshaft.com/literature/pdfs/j321-cv.pdf

Kits and small parts. (1.0MB)
http://www.spicerdriveshaft.com/literature/pdfs/j300p-9.pdf

Centering yokes, tube yokes, and ball tube yokes. (444KB)
http://www.spicerdriveshaft.com/literature/pdfs/j300p-5.pdf


All coming from this page:

Everything you ever wanted to know about Spicer driveshafts.
http://www.spicerdriveshaft.com/literature/light_vehicle.html