I have read in several places about a few of the WMS guys running 14 bolt fronts. There was a Jeep in JP about a year or so ago that had a dana 60 front that originated as a rear out of a checker cab.

What is involved in making a rear housing into a front axle?

You have to machine out the inside of the axle tubes near where they meet the housing so that they can fit a seal. This is so that it holds gear oil. Then you take d60 outers and weld them onto the outside of the 14-bolt tubes. You have to make custom 14-bolt inner shafts since they are a different spline count than d60's. It's very expensive but if you own a machine shop that can make the outers, like WMS does, it would be worth it considering the prices of front d60's these days.

J. J.

Last time i checked John was the only one running a 14 bolt front.

I contacted them about that and they basically said that you would need a dana 60 front and a 14 bolt to make a 14 bolt front, and then you have no selectable locker for the front?!
yes a 14 bolt front is big and cool, but I do not see it in any way being cheaper unless you have the ability to make your own knuckles and axles and can do it for next to nothing. Otherwise just get a 60.

I see the knuckles and axle shafts as being the most valuable part on the thing, so if you can find a supplier of them cheap and easy then there is a serious idea of making rear axles into fronts, otherwise, start hunting.

I don't know the guys by name there, it just appears to be surfacing a little bit more lately and I was thinking about how readily available dana 60 rears are compared ot 60 fronts and if the cost was low enough to build one using odds and ends.

a 14 bolt was just the first one to pop into my mind....how about a 44 or 60?

something like a waggy 44 rear housing with ford EB tubes and chevy outers or something? would this be easily compiled or am I better off taking it up the arse to find a mint EB axle whole.....

I am pretty fluid right now as to what axles I am going to go with...I am not building this untill the end of summer and am looking to run 37 inch or bigger tires (not bigger than 42)

am I off base here at all?

I was at WMS last week and visited with John, and though I didn't inquire as to why he chose to build a 14 bolt front, I think I know...Why not?? Owning a machine shop that does custom 4x4 work, why wouldn't you want to build something that nobody else has other than to say....look what I did. As far as building a front, the expensive parts aren't the 60 centersections, it's the knuckles and outers. The only way it'd be practical to build a rear into a front is if you had access to the outers off a junk 60 frontend. On the other hand, if you wanted a smaller axle it would be more practical to take outers off a less-desirable GM 10 bolt and put a 9" center or toyota center in it. You could even do it with a dana 60 center with 30 spline side gears but you wouldn't gain anything but less ground clearance.

Unless 44 fronts are non-existant around you, building one from a rear is really alot of work to get something that came on about 10 million different vehicles in the last 25 years.

Now a 60 may be a different story, if you can find a front sixty with a FUBAR'd housiing, but with all the other goodies in good shape, it may be worth doing, but you won't get the hi-pinion that makes some front 60's so valuable.

chad

your putting twice as much money and time into it doing it that way. if you look hard enough, you will find a front 60 for $500. or the full 79 1ton chevy with a blown engine someone is parting out for a couple hundred bucks. they are out there. in texas, they are pretty easy to find, since every other vehicle on the road is a one ton truck. maybe you just need to take a short road trip.

the advantage to the 14 bolt is supposed to be the 3rd pinion bearing, like the 9" has...

OK. Here's the deal with a 14-bolt front for Wagoner: They make d60 knuckles from scratch. They also make their own shafts. In fact, they make pretty much everything that they use! So if you were faced with the option of paying the over-inflated price of a $900+ d60 front vs. making a $100 14-bolt rear into a front by using parts that only cost your labor, what would YOU do? I would say that a 14-bolt front would have only been economical for them since, basically, their only cost is their own labor. But for them to do it for somone else at the cost of their labor, it would not be economical.

J. J.