Flanged offset 44

Flanged offset 44's are almost impossible to find. But the custom Summers Brothers axles I bought are a direct replacement for that houseing.

 

They do seem to be difficult to get ahold of. I have one under my CJ6 and one under a Renegade I that I'm thinking of parting out.

 

Oddly enough, about the same depending on how equipped. At least from what I've seen. More call in this area for the centered flanged rear, but the offset flanged rear are harder to come by.

 

if somebody needs a postal 44, I know where there are several.....and they are not very expensive.

 

Scott, did you ever come up with a solution for your 30 spline axles in your 2 piece axle housing?

I'm researching the same thing right now.... instead of starting a new thread I figured this would be as good a place as any to try to talk about this.

So first thing I wanted to figure out is what is the the difference is between the 19 spline two piece axle housing (I'll call it the tapered housing) and the 30 spline 1 piece flanged axle housing.

I did a bunch of part lookups on the web, dug through various articles here on earlycj5 and came up with the two rough sketches. (This is very much a work in progress, please, please, comment on what I got wrong.)

19 spline, two piece tapered axle housing:


The tapered housing uses a tapered roller bearing to locate the axle. The tapered cone of the bearing rests up against a shoulder on the axle shaft (I think). There is a 3 piece thrust pin assembly located between the left and right axles (inside the differential). Preload of the tapered roller bearings is developed by the backing plate/retainer assembly pressing against the shoulder of the cup (outside part of the bearing), to the cone, axle, thrust pin, other axle, cone, cup and back out to the retainer plate on the other side. (wow, who came up with this!)

There appears to be an inner grease/oil seal that is also 1.375Id, but this just doesn't make any sense. (seems like you would need a shoulder for the bearing cone to seat against--it could be that this shoulder is just a very small shoulder, enough to seat the bearing and small enough to work with this seal) and an outer dust/grease seal located outboard of the brake backing plate.


30 spline, one piece flanged axle housing


The flanged housing uses a roller bearing assembly and as far as I can tell does not require an external form of preload like the tapered housing. There appears to be an inner grease/oil seal and an outer grease/dust seal as shown. It is unclear to me whether the bearing retainer plate installs inboard or outboard of the drum backing plate. One other thing to note is that this housing (apparently) does not share the same/common 6 bolt pattern used on the tapered and front D25/27 axles. The top two holes are further down.


From what I can tell, there are two ways to make a flanged 30 spline axle fit the old tapered axle housing.

Option 1, keep the original bearing system (PITA)
-Machine a 1.375 bearing surface w/ a snap ring just inboard of the bearing.
-Machine a small diameter hole on the inboard (differential) side to accept the thrust pin
-Reuse the stock 1.375" ID inner oil seal

Assembly would go as follows:
Install inner oil seal in housing
Slide dust seal cover, grease seal, backing plate, shims, bearing cup and then bearing cone onto the axle shaft.
Install retaining ring for bearing cone.

Install retaining/backing plate bolts.

The very difficult PITA part of this I think would be getting your bearing preload dialed in. I'm not sure how to do this; perhaps start with no shims, measure your backlash and then install XX thickness of shims to develop the proper preload. Between this and setting the thrust pin length/depth I can see this being very "not fun".

Option 2
Build shaft similar to stock flanged shaft. Re-use flanged type roller bearing. Pick out a different (TBD) inner seal that fits the 2.875OD and 1.50shaft, or turn the shaft to 1.375 in the seal area.

The question I have (and apparently it's a sticking point) is what depth do you have available in the end of the tapered housing for a bearing? As you mentioned that stock bearing will hang out .080" too much.

Per NAPA online lookup the stock bearing is a SET10/A10 with dimensions of I.D.: 1.5630" O.D.: 2.8760" Width: 0.7660"

It's not clear to me what exactly is supposed to butt up against the shoulder of this bearing on the flanged application--the backing plate, retainer plate (seems obvious, right?), or seal.

On the tapered axle which of the parts have an ID less than 2.50"--shims, backing plate, or retainer? If they all are greater than 2.50", you should be able to make a ring + a retainer plate that goes outboard of your backing plate. If they are all under 2.50" then you could probably get them opened up to 2.60"ish and then add a new retainer and ring spacer.

 

Yes I did come up with a solution. I'm running the Warn Full Floater set up. I gave up on the Flanged axle I have. They would have worked with the stock carrier, and I could have used them. If the carrier had 30 spline. The problem was. The flanged axles will not work with a Detroit Locker. I had the Detroit set up before I found out about the axles. I also found out you can not use a Detroit Locker in a offset 44 with the two piece axles. Why this is. You need to set the end play off the cross shaft in the carrier. The Detroit Locker doesn't have one. Unlike the flanged offset 44 that has the end play set by the bearing crush seal that is between the bearing and the backing plate. With this set up you could use a Detroit Locker. The problem was. I couldn't figure out how to set the end play with the flanged axles. Now I have replacement High strength axles that will fit in a flanged offset 44 if you use the stock bearings. That I can't use.

This is why I went with the FF set up.

http://groups.msn.com/ScottShannonMilliner/customaxles.msnw?albumlist=2
http://groups.msn.com/ScottMilliner/fullfloaterdana44.msnw?albumlist=2