87 Ford E300 Van

Dana 61 - 35 spline 1 1/2" shafts 67" wide

Thought i was in trouble but all i need is a ring gear spacer, Dana 60 Gears, Detroit Locker 35spline

and im set.... anybody know what thickness the ring gear spacer needs to be ???

Brian

You'll get alot more info on subjects like this in General 4x4 Discussion. Any of the major ring&pinion manufacturers should know.
Rob

I think it is .4375" no one that I know of makes those as a production item, it will have to be custom, so unless you are setup to make it yourself it might be cheaper to buy a 60.

sorry my keybord is not working right, so I will have few missing letters. I think you can get "thick cut gears" at least you can for HP 60s. Get the series 4 carrier(4.56 and lower) and the thick cut gears that will get you right where you need to be.

Believe it or not Mr. Gasket does make a ring gear spacer for a dana 60. Their web site has a catalog that lists the thickness of the thing.

Randys ring and Pinion in Everett, WA. helped a friend out with the exact same problem. they had the spacer in stock.......

The Mr gasket spacer is not the right thickness it is too thick, it is for using lower ratio gears on a high ratio carrier. It can be blanchard ground to size, but if Randy's has it in stock that is really cool, go that route, cause the Mr gasket spacer is super cheasy

thank you

Let us know what you end up doing, I always hear conflicting info on dana 61 stuff and I have never done one myself, so I would like to hear what you end up doing.

I went through the whole 61/60 thing. Here is what I was told by Randys R&P and others. If you stay with 61 you can use a gear spacer but I was told its weaker by some %age. You are also limited in the ratios available. I decided I wanted to keep it simpler so I found a 60 housing, cut of the big spindle 61 ends and put them on the 60. You have the 35 spline axles already so your ahead of the game. It was just more hassle trying to make the 61 work and I ended up with a 35 spline 60 cheaper and easier than trying to find one.

i ordered the parts from DTD today hopefully they will be here by this weekend

Brian

FearMe...Is there such thing as a dana 61 front? Or is the 61 only in the rear? Anyone?

Maybe I'm missing something...

but why bother with a 60/61 whatever when you could buy a dana 70 that's already 35 spline, spend a half hour with your grinder and it's the size of a 60? they use the same diff cover... I just don't get it. :confused:

Ring gear spacer bad! D61 usualy bad! IMHO stay away from the 61, but since you got all that coming I say good luck. By the way are you sure that it's 35 spline? :confused:

All Dana 61 Ford rears are 30 spline per Dana cataloge. And both of the one`s I have are. Later Willis:beer:

Just looking through some back threads and came across this one. I have a rear Dana 61 3:54 gears and have installed a Detroit Electrac (LSD/ELocker) out of a Dana 60 (4:56> has a taller deck height than the one listed for a 3:54 ratio). I use a spacer and it works just fine with longer bolts. The Mr. Gasket spacer is 0.160" thick (4mm) and not wide enough. You need to fab a 6mm spacer which most machine shops can do if they have a template (buy a 0.160" one first to copy). You'll have to extend the pilot guide to be able to centralize the ring gear, but again a machine shop, or friend, can do this easily on a lathe. I extended mine from 5mm to 20mm with no problem; 10mm would do. This way you should be able to fit most Dana 60 aftermarket products into a 61, which has thicker axle tubes (3.5" instead of 3"). During my research into this about 50/50 said ring gear spacers were bad and 50 % said they had no problems. Most who said bad was from hearsay; a friend of a friend told them or they read it somewhere, but not sure where. In my case, I run 35" tires with alot of torque and have been axle deep in sand and still spun all 4 tires without breaking anything.

Dunebasher