Junkyard Built Dana 44, Part II

Welding directly to the cast housing is possible, but it will generally be weaker than welding to steel. So we attached a 1/4-inch steel plate by drilling and tapping two holes for Grade 8 bolts in the bottom of the perch instead.

We then added more 1/4-inch plate to tie in the coil mount on top of the axle. The Dynatrac lower control-arm bracket is welded to this hefty plate rather than the cast portion of the housing. The remaining bracketry is much easier to install.

With the Dynatrac brackets properly located, we went to work with the MIG welder to sew 'em home. The Dynatrac parts are way beefier than the stock TJ Dana 30 pieces and can be made to fit nearly any front axlehousing.

Rubicon Express control arms allow us the adjustability needed to get our Dana 44 axle located with proper caster and a pinion angle that's close to dead on. You'll need to invest in a serious wrench to snug the jam nuts on these beefy arms. We also recommend an adjustable track bar for lifted Jeeps. However, our Jeep's low-slung suspension and the larger differential housing made the stock track bar the only option for us.

Steering on a TJ, XJ, MJ, ZJ, or WJ is complex and needs to be set up correctly to avoid bumpsteer. We ran this rope through the mounting points of our drag link and track bar to show the location relationship. These two links should be as close to parallel (and length) as possible to avoid bumpsteer. Our setup was close, and we were able to move the track bar up just a bit to get our steering damn near perfect.

We used these threaded tubing inserts and jam nuts with the stock TJ tie-rod end (PN ES3096L) at the pitman arm, which requires a 22mm lefthand thread insert and jam nut. The other tie-rod end is for an '85 Chevy Blazer (PN ES2234R). This fits the stock Waggy tie rod's tapered hole and requires a 7/8-18 righthand thread insert and jam nut. We welded the threaded inserts into a length of rock-crushing 1 1/2-inch, 0.250-wall tubing.

We made some L-brackets to hold the new rubber brake hoses on the frame. Brake fluid runs through a pair of the longest Wagoneer rubber brake hoses we could find in our local part store's catalog.

If you kept the 6-lug pattern, you'll need some new wheels. The '70s-'90s Woody Wagoneers would have those multi-spoke 15x8-inch alloys that would look awesome on a TJ and match the lug pattern. These wheels are wide enough for 12 1/2-inch wide tires and maybe more. We couldn't find a decent set of Waggy wheels locally, but we did come across these bargain industrial-looking black 15x8-inch smoothies. Our Waggy front axle uses standard 7/16-20 lug nuts, and the Honda Dana 44 rearend uses metric 12x1.5 lug nuts. We found acorn lug nuts that are the same outside dimensions for both, so we only need to carry one lug wrench in case of a flat.