dana 44 loose tubes

on a rear offset dana 44..the tubes are loose. Anyone have experience having them welded? What did it cost? I think finding another housing is easier but I already have this one cleaned up. Thanks

 

Tubes should be a press fit, welds should just keep them from rotating. Somebody re-tube it with the wrong tube?

 

yes they are plug welded in place along with a press fit. they do come loose if you use them for pulling people out of the mud like i did because of no other tie point at the time. it started leaking at the pumpkin where the tubes go in the diff. i think to this day that is why i was eating up the axle bearing on that side because of the loose tube. you can weld them but you have to use the right wire for the heat differences in the two different metals when it cools. the guy i'm having do my axles was in peterson's 4x4 magazine about welding the tubes to the cast housing. if you don't use the right wire and cool it down properly it will crack on you.

 

Not real sure what caused the tubes to come loose in the first place. The plug welds are brittle and cracking but they are that way on most older 44's I have run across. Guess I will keep looking for a used housing. I know dutchman can fix me up but I dont want to end up with 300 dollars into a rear 44 when there are still lots of them out there

 

Get another housing. Sorry Patrick but even if you weld it up the tubes will still move around in the housing due to tube flex. Been down that road too many times with AMC 20's. Plus to really get them true you need a surface ground rod with machined pucks that install in the carrier bearing saddles and housing ends where the axle bearings seat. Usually if the tubes are loose the tubes aren't the only issue. Usually the carrier is stretched where the tubes press in. A good used housing would be much cheaper and should be fairly easy to find.


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:stout:

 

If thats a housing you got from me, I will give you another one. I have one here complete with 3.73 gears.

 

sounds like a stand up guy

 

yah he's decent

 

Nick, have you ever ran across an actual Dana run-out spec for the tubes? I invested about 4 hours in a seach and came up completely empty.

The other question that comes up is that even though you set them up "perfect", the minute you put weight on them, they will no longer be perfect. It is not possible to get a completely flex free axle so it all comes back to what is acceptable and I can't find an answer for that. What I do know is that they will run for quite a while with a very observable bend in them-at least a full float. I don't think the longevity of a semi-float would be as long with the bearings moving around in the ends of the housing.

 

For once I agree with you......


Get a new housing, as the old man would say: "Fix it right the first time"

 

well, I did it at everything worked well , no additional cracks or oil seepage . it had only just started to weep so it had not wallowed out the diff yet . and my jeep is abused.I had a friend spin the housing to get a full 1/2 pass like Baja said .
http://www.earlycj5.com/forums/showthread.php?55565-cracked-rotisserie-welds-on-D44-rearend

 

I've never found a factory spec. When we build them we get them as absolutely centered as possible. We have the ground rod and pucks we had custom made for this purpose. I like to see less than .020" off center.
Yup, tubes flex. Unavoidable. That's why there are clearances between axles haft splines and side gears built in, to allow for this. Running with a bent housing for any length of time is a different deal however. It will wear splines, axle bearings, side gears, etc rapidly. In the case of full float conversions it can wipe out the locking hubs rapidly as they are not designed to run with angular loads for any length of time. At the very least it makes the hubs want to unlock/unload on their own. The very momentary loads placed on them combined with the built in cumulative clearance allows the longevity of stock style shafts and ff kits. Too much flex and the shaft can hit the inside of the spindle causing the shaft and spindle to weld themselves together from the friction. Seen it happen. When Warn first started building ff kits they had real issues with the AMC 20 rear. During their investigation they found model 20 housings that were bent right from the factory. These were NOS units that had never been installed......
One of the reasons I'm not a fan of those diffs.

If a diff is used just at slow speed like offroad use only then the components can last much longer with a bent housing than one used at highway speeds.


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