Homebuilt High Pinion Dana 44 - Wrecking Yard YJ Part II

This axle would have been an awesome addition if we had 4 inches of lift on our YJ. Unfortunately, with only 1 1/2 inches, we ran into problems aplenty - most of them centered around the steering.

The idea was pretty simple; we wanted a low-buck front axle to match our low-buck rear axle. So the plan was to grab a junkyard Dana 44 front axle (which are plentiful), cut it down at home, re-gear it ourselves, and throw it in.

We went scrounging and found a high-pinion 44 out of a '78 Ford pickup. The axle was eight-lug when we got it and way too wide, so we were going to have to convert it to five-lug in addition to cutting it down. Yeah, yeah ... the high-pinion axle we lucked into isn't a common axle, but since we did find it and the price was the same as a low-pinion version, why not use it?

Again, in the same day of junkyard scrounging, we went looking for a 5-on-5 1/2-bolt pattern setup for the outers. We knew we wanted flat-top knuckles (just in case), discs, and locking hubs (not drive flanges). Finding yet more odd parts, we ended up pirating an '85 Dodge Ramcharger for everything from the knuckle out.Like the 9-inch in the first part, we went to Currie Enterprises to shorten the axle shaft of the side we cut down as well as for the U-bolts, U-bolt skidplates, weld-on spring perches, and shock mounts.

Here's how our conglomeration of odd parts went together.

After determining how much we wanted to narrow our axle, we decided to save some time and effort by only cutting one side. The caster was going to come out OK, but we had to cut deeper on this axle than previous ones to get under the weld and knock the inner "C" off.	Once the knuckle was off, we cut 4 3/4 inches off of it for a 61-inch WMS to WMS width and heated the knuckle up so it would slide back on easily. We had Don Bridgewater from Zesty Fabworks weld it on to ensure it would never come off again.
We ended up having to get new calipers because our old ones were leaking. We used a set of flexible hoses from Classic Tube to tie the Dodge caliper into the Jeep hard brake line.	If you look closely at the pictures in this story, you'll see two different steering setups. With the lift we were running, there was no end to the steering problems. We finally used a set of high-steer arms from Rockstomper.com and had them bent in a monster press so we could hang our tie rod where it needed to be.	Usually, with Dana axles the biggest pain is in removing the bearings on the carrier to put shims in. We used this tool from Randy's Ring & Pinion to make installation of our Precision Gears and Detroit Truetrac a snap.
We ended up making our own tie rods. We got the steel from National Tube Supply Company while the taps came from e-taps.com. Parts Mike Parts supplied us with the tie rod ends at the best price (with jam nuts) anywhere.	We used a pitman arm from an XJ and tapered it so the drag link would sit on top and, thus, clear the tie rod. We tried to keep the stock ratio between pitman arm length and steering knuckle arm length that resulted in the tie rod just rubbing the differential cover at full lock.	When we cut the axle, all our measurements looked OK, but after it was in and we tried to hook up our driveshaft, it was just too close for comfort on the exhaust and was also the wrong length. We got a small diameter heavy-wall shaft from J.E. Reel Drive Line Specialists to solve that.