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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
When they say “crate axles” that’s exactly what they mean! The G2 Dana44 and Dana60 arrived in stout wooden crates from California.
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
A bevy of genuine Currie Engineering Johnny Joints were used instead bushings. These come with weld-in bungs, are re-buildable, and offer superior articulation.
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
Although G2 claims their Dana-44 axles to be stronger than OE Rubicon axles, we decided to go with a full width truss for extra strength to mount the upper control arms. You can also see the lower coil-over mounts have been tacked in place and when fully welded will also act as a gusset for the top of the inner C.
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
A beefy Tereflex High Steer knuckle was used on the passenger side to allow the use of a full-width drag link. 1 Ton GM truck tie rod joints and 1 ½ inch x 0.250 wall DOM tubing was used to handle the abuse.
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
The coilover towers now house Radflo coilovers and the cross-brace is highly recommended.
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
Burns was able to take a couple of weeks off work to help open the rear wheel wells right back to the corner of the tub.
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Burns & Heather MacDonald photos
TJ Regeneration
Pushing around 38.5 inch tires is aided by a complete hydraulic assist setup from PSC.
By Burns MacDonald
Reviving a Rusty Wrangler for Trail Duty
There comes a time when most off-roaders realize that they are running on borrowed time. I have never been happy with the axles on my Jeep. Not that they let me down, but I just wanted to go to the next level in terms of gearing and tires. To do so, I needed to move beyond the Dana 35/30 combo that is stock for an early TJ.
I had taken my rig into National 4-Wheel Drive in Smiths Falls to get some rust repairs done. Once they had stripped the rocker armour off, the rot was much more extensive than I had realized. This meant a bigger job and more metal to be added, including the sills and tub mounts - in short, it wasn't going anywhere for the winter. Dan and the guys at National would work on it in slow periods, which would be a little more affordable.
While they had it there, I asked Dan to check the dripping from the front pinion and confirm that the chromoly axles he had installed a couple of years back for a previous owner, were still there. As it turns out, the pinion bearings, seal and crush sleeve needed to be replaced and the chromoly axle shafts had been removed by the previous owner and replaced with OE ones. Sooner or later, the stock Dana 30 in the front of my 1998 TJ would succumb to oversize tires and the demands of rock-crawling and give out on me. The back axle was a little better as it had a Super 35 kit, but the OE TJ Dana 35 tubes and differential housing are notoriously weak, so any project to change the front, should include the back. I didn’t realize it then, but this creeping rationalization that allowed the one problem to be solved by fixing two more, would become the main theme of what would become a full winter-long build.
Originally I pursued getting a set of Rubicon Dana 44’s from another Jeeper in the region, however as usual by the time I decided to buy them, they were sold. After a week of searching, it was clear that there were no other good used candidate axles in the area. This meant looking at crate axles, and I decided to go with G2 axles. One of the main attractions were that they were a ‘bolt-in’ replacement – little did I realize then that I would eventually not end up using any of the factory mount-points and brackets.
Any decision on axles must take into account intended tire size and gear ratios. I had been running 35x15’s with 4.88 gears, but I wanted to go slightly north of that and ‘up-size.’ The terrain here is rugged Canadian Shield and larger tires and lower gears would help improve the rig’s rock-crawling capabilities. Looking at G2’s axle offerings, I noticed that for only a small difference in cost over their Dana 44 axle, I could order their Rock Jock Dana 60. This assembly uses the Currie Enterprises high-pinion angled housing and comes with optional rear disc brakes and a range of gear ratios and locker choices. In the end, I settled on the G2 Dana 44+ in the front, equipped with an Eaton eLocker, and the Rock Jock 60 fitted with the disc brakes and a Detroit locker in the rear. Both axles were running chromoly shafts and 5.38 gear ratios.
By now, it was clear that this was going to be a bigger project than I had originally planned. Luckily, Dan Trudel from Smiths Falls National4WD took me under his wing and we worked together. Tim Rogers at TMR Customs is also a good friend and through the build he, Dan and I became the “design team.” While I also did some of the work around the edges, Dan and his crew did all of the real hardcore fabrication.
Planning and design became key. With the much bigger Dana 60, the rear axle would have to be relocated further back to provide a workable drive shaft set-up. To solve that problem, the rear track bar had to go and I decided to remove the rear gas tank as well, giving me more ground clearance and a better departure angle. In the end, we moved rear axle back almost 5-in and the front axle forward about 1.5-in. This extended the TJ’s wheelbase to just a tad under the ‘magic 100’ figure desired by many rock-crawlers. For the fuel tank, I ordered a 20-gallon fuel Genright fuel cell, with roll-over valves and a safety cover. But we still had to solve the problem of the missing rear track bar.
I was already running a rather worn 6-in long arm lift kit and was getting tired of changing the poly bushings every season. In the end, I decided to go with a triangulated 4-link set up, with the upper arms converging on the top of the Dana 60 housing. Currie provides pre-threaded mount points of the top of their housing, but we decided to reinforce that by adding a small saddle truss. The upper and lower arms were fabbed from 2-in, .025-in wall DOM tubing, with Currie Johnny Joints on each end. Relocating the axles meant moving the mount points on the TJ frame. In rock-crawling, suspension flex is the name of the game and moving the existing OE coil spring perches and shock mounts involved as much labour cost, as installing other alternatives. I decided to bite the bullet and go with Radflo coil-overs from TMR Customs, which give greater articulation, stability, and can be fine-tuned to suit any need. Installing the coil-overs involved frenching in towers in the back, each of which were double-gusseted. In the front, we used full towers and a cross bar, as we considered it to be a stronger set-up than the hoops that are sometimes used. Moving the rear axles also meant that the rear wheel wells were radiused out to the maximum, with the opening brought to the very end of the body tub.
For now I retained the radius arm set-up on the front, although we had to replaced the radius arms with longer ones to convert from bushings to Johnny Joints. By using sets of left and right thread joints with jam nuts, adjusting caster angle on the front axle now becomes a minor 10-minute job. Although G2 specs their Dana 44 as being stronger that OE Rubicon axles, we decided to reinforce the axle further. A full width truss was fabricated. The inner C’s were reinforced on the bottom with gussets from TMR, while the bottom coil-over mounts also double as gussets on the top of the C’s. We fabricated the tie-rod out of 1.5-in 0.250 wall DOM tubing and used 1-ton Chevy truck tie-rod ends with weld-in bungs from TMR. Instead of the standard OE wishbone drag link set-up, which has problems in high flex situations, we made a full length drag link out of the same material as the tie-rod, attaching it to a beefy Terraflex high-steer knuckle on the passenger side using a 1-ton Chevy rod-end.
For tires, I originally decided on 37x12.50x15 Maxxis Creepy Crawlers. However, when we mounted them on the rig, I just didn’t like how much the tread-face was crowned in the middle, despite the fact I was using rims of the recommended width… somehow they just didn’t look right. So, switch to plan B… Super Swamper TSL SX 38.5x14.50x15’s. In fact, these chunky bias ply tires measured closer to 38 plus inches “out of the box” and the 5.38 gear and beefed up axles should be able to handle them just fine. In fact, the ratio calculations worked out perfectly and very close to what I was running with 35’s and a 4.88 gear.
With such big tires, I needed to beef up the stock TJ steering. I considered converting to a Dodge Durango steering box, but in the end went with a complete hydraulic-assist solution from PSC in Texas. Lance Gilbert at PSC put together a great package for my needs. He knows his stuff - Lance is a long-standing King of the Hammers competitor and one of the editors/moderators of Pirate 4x4. That package consisted of their brand new (not refurbished) steering gearbox, a high performance pump, a ram cylinder, reservoir, and a cooler (heat exchanger), plus all the necessary hoses and fittings. The quality of the stuff when you open the box is striking – real eye candy. As a final measure, we reinforced the steering box mount and added a cross-brace to reduce strain on the sector shaft.
Other additions to the build included a Flex-A-Lite Black Widow Extreme electric fan with a 3-way switch so that I can turn it off when water crossing. Hood louvers, Mastercraft suspension seats with 5-point safety harnesses, a 150 amp alternator and a TMR Customs rear bumper were all mounted before the Jeep received final rust repairs and a killer Orange Crush paint job and graphics.
All in all, I ended up making a bigger investment in time and money than I had originally intended, but it is now a well-designed and integrated build that is truly tailored for the wheeling I want to do. It looks great, but more importantly it is an awesome beast on the trail - it's only limitation now is the old guy behind the wheel and I’m still working on that.