I have the following axles:

one Dana 60 front (4.10 ratio)
one Dana 60 rear (4.10 ratio) (old...16 sp shafts / small housing)
two Dana 61 rears (3.73 ratio) (BIG housings)

I would like to run a 61 housing... rather than buy another 60.
Everyone says I can't swap the 4.10 gears into the 61.

Everyone = Dynatrac, Randy's R&P, my local bolt on shop, and
people I wheel with.

nobody seems to know what is diferent, they just seem to agree that there is a diference.

Do any of you guys know if / what the diference is?

(it seems to me I should just be able to Linde-lock the open 61 arrier and run a ring gear spacer on it with the 60 gears.)

Thanks in advance.

I have a Dana book number XGI 93 page # 33 that shows up to 4.56 R&P for a full float mod 61-1 and 61-2 for an open diff, and 4.10 for a LS

Hey ChiScouter. Where did you get the Dana book? I tried to find something like that a long time ago to make my search for axles easier. Came down to a lot of $$.

call drivetrain direct talk to the manager

you can run D60 carrier in your 61 if you buy a 25$ ring gear spacer...

i baught a D60 spool and a spacer and D60 gears... all fit just fine

Brian

These Dana books show up on Ebay all the time, depending on the book they go from 5 to 40 bucks. I don't know what catagory specificly they are in, but I do a search of all of Ebay motors under dana. It usually gives me 9 to 15 pages of axles, Tcases, books, etc. Axle shops seem to get large quanities from Dana as giveaways, and I believe that they can also special order them from Dana for you. The book I quoted the info from has a cover price of 7 bucks and is a 1993 edition

dana 61 uses 3 1/2 axle tubes and the carrier has a diffrent off set.

the reason behind teh birth of the D61 was so you could run 3.07 gears in a dana. with the offset of the D60 the highest gear is a 3.54, in order to get a pinion head bigg enough to make a 3.07 ratio the pinion had to be move .25in over in the casting because the deck of the carrier could not be moved. a .25in RG spacer is all it takes to make a D61 a D60. for those of you who don't mind running spacers that is.

the 61's were common in dodge front ends and ford van rears.