XJ Dana 44 Thick gear re-hash nonsense

[Sean778]

I need help with the brain parts of this decision. I have an ‘89 Pioneer XJ with 4.0l, AW4, NP242, hp non-disco 30 front, factory d44 rear, 3.55s in the pumpkins, on some old but no-mile 33x12.5r15 Mickey Thompsons.
The plan has always been to keep it on 33s, keep the decent leaf sprung rear and the mishmash short arm lift stuff up front until long arms come together, and re-gear to 4.56 with selectable lockers. This wagon is going camping, hunting, and realistically mostly going to and from work and picking my little girl up from daycare.
A guy local to me on marketplace has some new JK, thick-cut, 4.88s and a jk master install kit for a good price, and I’m poor. Any good reason not to try to make these work with the open carrier that is in there, and stuff a full case locker designed for the numerically lower gear sets whenever finance allows? Am I being stupid thinking about dinking around with the JK stuff? Ease my mental burdens with a free one-way ticket on the 870 Express to open-mindedness? Bacon?
Not enough sleep has had me over-thinking simple decisions for most this year-of-our-Lord 2024.

 

[Weasel]

if you can get them to fit, cheap is a good way to get started.

 

[Sean778]

I seem to remember reading that some dudes made the thick gears work with a couple oddities like Dana 50 bolts and not shimming one side at all or something. I just want to make sure that I’m not making some obvious error in judgement here with the sleep deprivation brain that I have been working with lately. Thanks for the input, I appreciate the sober second thought.

 

[subybaja]

I vote for sell some shit you don't need, buy once, cry once.

Every time I try to save money on something that's not really what I want, I end up with not really what I want and usually spend more trying to be cheap.

 

[Bebop]

I vote for sell some shit you don't need, buy once, cry once.

Every time I try to save money on something that's not really what I want, I end up with not really what I want and usually spend more trying to be cheap.

Facts

 

[arse_sidewards]

If you're not a little bitch who's afraid to do some tinkering you should be able to get this working on budget.

Once you get the axle out and look at the situation in front of you what you need to do should become pretty clear. Worst case you need a carrier but bare carriers are cheap.

 

[Sean778]

Thanks for chiming in folks. Arse_Sidewards, your point about open carriers being cheap actually works both ways, since I don’t mind doing the setup more than once (I need the practice since differentials are part of the curriculum for 2nd year school next year). I could arguably just get an open carrier for the deeper gears and buy a locker later.
In between helping the little guy deal with the flu all night last night, I found some better prices for new gears online (The Canada factor sucks sometimes), so my cost-savings trying to make the JK gears work has shrunk a bit.

 

[F***roads]

TONS AND 4Deez hello from calgary! I have friends local that have XJs 33"-35" tires and seem to keep stock axles somewhat happy. if you can do as much work yourself, that can really keep cost down. buy once cry once is absolutely a thing. but actually getting out and driving your home built shitbox is amazing. if your not doing hammers type wheeling run what you got and upgrade as needed ( or as time and money will allow )

 

[Sean778]

TONS AND 4Deez hello from calgary! I have friends local that have XJs 33"-35" tires and seem to keep stock axles somewhat happy. if you can do as much work yourself, that can really keep cost down. buy once cry once is absolutely a thing. but actually getting out and driving your home built shitbox is amazing. if your not doing hammers type wheeling run what you got and upgrade as needed ( or as time and money will allow )

Howdy from the somewhat more frozen and Northerly part of Louise’s namesake province. It’s been an embarrassingly long time since this shitbox has done anything except sit on jack stands. I keep thinking about my late best-friend from your city and how he was always keeping me motivated to plug away at this Jeep, so that and the desire to move to a nicer house have me trying to dust off the cobwebs and get this thing roadworthy again.
After getting some sleep this afternoon, I am finding myself leaning toward the philosophy of the buy-once cry-once crowd here. We are planning a move, so Subybaja’s point about selling shit I don’t need makes good sense too. Even though I’m working in the automotive trade now, I probably don’t need 5 or six of every wrench and socket and tool at home on top of everything at work. The parts Jeep could turn into a few bucks once it’s warm enough scavenge what I need from it without my nostrils and eyelids freezing shut. Other shit too, like my beautiful mahogany PRS that I haven’t played in a decade, could feasibly finance 2/3 of a grizzly locker. Mods, clearly this should have been in Chit Chat, my bad, I can’t emphasize enough how stupid the bad run of sleep has made me.

 

[arse_sidewards]

Never sell hand tools. Worst case the b rate stuff can fill out house or vehicle specific boxes.

If you were talking shit like PTO accessories or a mortar mixer it’d be different.

 

[Skinny]

I'd probably just run what you have until you can afford to do it right all at once. Doing gears and diffs is an expensive part of any project especially if you aren't setting them up yourself.

Set aside a budget of what it is going to take to do the diffs you want. Save your money and when you hit that goal you are ready to go.

Credit cards are great for something like this if you are responsible enough. I was in my twenties and couldn't afford to build my crawler all at once. Didn't have a car payment, lived within my means. But fitting driveshafts, gears, etc. is expensive when you have to do things twice.

So it all went on the card and I just paid it off in a year. Sure interest is a motherfucker and if you can't afford it a credit card doesn't solve that problem. But doing big parts of your build all at once does money.

Of course if you live check to check and drive a brand new car payment to work every day this may not be good advice.

 

[subybaja]

A couple thoughts, since this is Newb and all...

+ whatever for "drive it, don't perfect it". Way too easy to join the ranks of Jackstand Losers, especially when you have to shovel down to your project.

Sorry for the P link, but Carl Jantz is a gear genius. All DIYers could learn a thing from him.

Ring & pinion set up, Jantz Engineering advanced...

www.pirate4x4.com

The $120 Vevor bearing puller is worth having.

Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

 

[Sean778]

Never sell hand tools. Worst case the b rate stuff can fill out house or vehicle specific boxes.

If you were talking shit like PTO accessories or a mortar mixer it’d be different.

Yeah, I’d probably regret getting nickels on the dollar for tools. I should probably round up all the parts for vehicles I don’t own any longer and liquidate them instead.

I'd probably just run what you have until you can afford to do it right all at once. Doing gears and diffs is an expensive part of any project especially if you aren't setting them up yourself.

Set aside a budget of what it is going to take to do the diffs you want. Save your money and when you hit that goal you are ready to go.

Credit cards are great for something like this if you are responsible enough. I was in my twenties and couldn't afford to build my crawler all at once. Didn't have a car payment, lived within my means. But fitting driveshafts, gears, etc. is expensive when you have to do things twice.

So it all went on the card and I just paid it off in a year. Sure interest is a motherfucker and if you can't afford it a credit card doesn't solve that problem. But doing big parts of your build all at once does money.

Of course if you live check to check and drive a brand new car payment to work every day this may not be good advice.

You are making good sense, but somehow I managed to forget how to do all the grown-up budgeting/planning stuff after I made decent money for long enough and didn’t need to. Now that I’m poor like a teenager again, the strategies are going to have to be re-learned I suppose. 🤣

A couple thoughts, since this is Newb and all...

+ whatever for "drive it, don't perfect it". Way too easy to join the ranks of Jackstand Losers, especially when you have to shovel down to your project.

Sorry for the P link, but Carl Jantz is a gear genius. All DIYers could learn a thing from him.

Ring & pinion set up, Jantz Engineering advanced...

www.pirate4x4.com

The $120 Vevor bearing puller is worth having.

Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

Thanks for the tip on the Vevor puller, it ended up being cheaper for me to order it on the Vevor Canada website than to get it from Amazon. I’ll read through that Carl Jantz info, and then again here once I get some parts on hand. The fire is lit under my ass again to get this thing on the road, and we still want to get out of this house and into something more liveable, so the jackstand loser game has to end for the sake of moving now also.

One of the younger guys in parts seems keen on helping me find what I need, it’ll just depend on what he can get me a deal on. Being that it’s a Kia dealer, there will probably be limitations on what he has access to, but at the very least it’ll be cheaper to get the non-specialty parts through work. I’ll shop for the rest new, albeit on this side of the border so I don’t get cornholed on the duties, etc.

I’m pretty firmly in the camp of buy once, cry once now, and getting what I want out of this thing. I appreciate all the votes/advice/opinions. As for the tons and 40’s crowd, maybe the next project will fit that bill, but this needs to be fully functional first, so

 

[Skinny]

Dude I'm 40 and still get stuck in analysis paralysis with my personal builds. Constantly have to remind myself that not everything is a show truck or a spared no expense build.

But I'm a big fan of doing things in stages and not double spending. I just finished my axle swap and running retread 33s because I need to get it rolling but don't want to get into big tires, gears, amd lockers just yet.

When the time comes I'll go through the axles, spend all the money once, and get some nice tires. Till then I'm slummin it!