Has anyone had any experience with a Cruiser rear axle housing that has been modified to be closer to center for running a centered output transfer case?

The modification I'm talking about is done like this.....

Pull the third, flip the axle housing end for end so the dif is now on the oppisite side,
Cut new nothes for the ring gear clearance,
Re-install the third,
do whatever to the spring perches and bolt it back up.

Apparently this puts the third member into a "closer to center" position that works with a transfer case with a centered output.

Why bother,
Get a stronger centered rear axle and go to town..
If you want Toyota get a mini axle..

looks like it would work,
does anyone know if the bolt holes line up for sure.
and you use the bottom diff cover bolt instead of the drain hole

Ive got an extra rear housing, if you need one.

CV Unlimited sells 'em, Moorefield makes em. No c-clip axles, disc brakes with Monte Calipers...

Flipping the axle would just put the diff on the other side, not centered. There's some cuttin & weldin goin on to make a centered housing.

I will take a picture of it today.

Originally posted by Jason M
Why bother,
Get a stronger centered rear axle and go to town..
If you want Toyota get a mini axle..

might have something to do with the fact that you have the parts, plus lockers, disc brakes, any upgrades....:D

Originally posted by Eskimo
CV Unlimited sells 'em, Moorefield makes em. No c-clip axles, disc brakes with Monte Calipers...

Flipping the axle would just put the diff on the other side, not centered. There's some cuttin & weldin goin on to make a centered housing.

I will take a picture of it today.

we have looked at this and the pinion is offset to the outside so by flipping the rear housing the pinion will now be closer to center. not centered but close. will it work without vibrations? who knows :D

Weld it up.
The disk conversions are almost identical between the mini and the LC the caliper mounting bracket is the only difference.

On the positive side, If you flipped the housing upside down you would then instantly have the SO pads ;)

By the time you sell your axle and get a mini one the price is a wash. And you have a lot less hedaches on your hands.
Plus a stronger pinion and cheaper gearsets, no c clip....
..

True...didn't think about that. I know *mine* is centered and it took work. But I've heard of guys running centered output t-cases with stock cruiser diffs, but never seen it in person.

Originally posted by Jason M
Weld it up.
The disk conversions are almost identical between the mini and the LC the caliper mounting bracket is the only difference.

On the positive side, If you flipped the housing upside down you would then instantly have the SO pads ;)

By the time you sell your axle and get a mini one the price is a wash. And you have a lot less hedaches on your hands.
Plus a stronger pinion and cheaper gearsets, no c clip....
..

good points, but we are cruiserheads, who said we always do things the easy/smart way :eek: :beer:
Im curious, cause Ive heard of this mod for a while, but never heard of anyone who has done it. sounds like a cool thing to try, and not to much work. one of those fun little projects. :D

Originally posted by Eskimo
There's some cuttin & weldin goin on to make a centered housing.

I will take a picture of it today.

You're talking about the using a Cruiser third centered between two mini truck axles....I'd really like to see some pics.
I've got all the parts and pieces to do what you are talking about , but I've never actually seen the finished product.

As far as flipping the housing end for end, like 69Cruiser said the pinion is offset to the passenger side so it does actually come back a little closer to center. No cutting of the tubes, spring perches end up over the axle, use the same axle shafts, not to mention all the other parts , like money already spent on lockers, gears and stuff like that. Sounds like a quick and cheap way to bring it a few inches closer to center.

A few inches can be a whole lot depending on what you are getting into :D

Originally posted by Reddog



A few inches can be a whole lot depending on what you are getting into :D


who brought chuckles into this :D :D

Poor Chuckles, LOL ! It's probably better to keep one's cloothes on if one wants to run wild in the woods :D

Reddog, I had one of these housings that used Cruiser Diff/Mini Axles...I sold it to Georg...do you live near him?

Worked fine...the only PITA was pressing off the old bearings on the Toy axles and pressing new ones on.

Reddog, I had one of these housings that used Cruiser Diff/Mini Axles...I sold it to Georg...do you live near him?

Worked fine...the only PITA was pressing off the old bearings on the Toy axles and pressing new ones on.

Of course the only reason to do this was to run rear disc brakes..if you stick with the drums you won't have to do this part.

Basically, cut the pumpkin out of the Cruiser axle and then weld the Mini tubes to the pumpkin.

You mean Orangefj45 Georg ? he's close to me, he lives in Stockton. I'll have to ask him about that.

I actually started that Cruiser/mini rear axle project a while back.
Cut the center section out of a Cruiser housing, then I cut the tubes off a mini truck housing, started to size things up and that's about as far as I got. Seems real simple, mini truck axles, no c-clips, Cruiser third......
I started getting all worried about alignment and clearances and stuff like that.
Then I thought about bolting it all together, axles third member, complete then tack weld it all together. My big fear is having somthing pull out of alignment when I start welding on it.

I'd hate to go thru all that work and end up with some kind of howl caused by bad alignment.

Why bother at all? As long as the overall angle between the pinions and drive shaft are equal or less than they were with the passenger side TC output and the pinion flanges are parallel it shouldn't make any difference if the 3rd member is offset. The U joints won't care if the maximum angle is not in the verticle plane.

It could be an advantage as your drive shaft will be longer and therefore have a lower overall angle. It is also useful sometimes to know that your front and rear pumpkins are in the same line.

The only down side is that your friends will think it looks stupid.

:confused:

Originally posted by Pin Head
Why bother at all? As long as the overall angle between the pinions and drive shaft are equal or less than they were with the passenger side TC output and the pinion flanges are parallel it shouldn't make any difference if the 3rd member is offset. The U joints won't care if the maximum angle is not in the verticle plane.

It could be an advantage as your drive shaft will be longer and therefore have a lower overall angle. It is also useful sometimes to know that your front and rear pumpkins are in the same line.

The only down side is that your friends will think it looks stupid.

:confused:

You mean like this?

I made my rear axle with a slight driver's side offeset when I had the 2F since it is 4" offset to driver. Now with the 350 I am centerd and the diff is off.

No problem as the compound angles are way under the 1410 joint max operating angle.

Like Pinhead says, my friends think it looks stupid :flipoff2:

I'm kinda liken Pin Head's opinion here. "why bother"

I think before I get too involved in a centered dif I'll install the new transfer case and run the drive line at an angle. It may work just fine.

I seem to remember Dogwalker saying that on one of his early conversions he ran a Dana 300 with an angled driveline back to the stock LC dif location. Said he didn't have any problems.

Since you have two FJ25, you could always use one these centered axles. :D

Here's a pic of mine, if you care...

one more..

A good time to reverse your rear springs to help the angle a little too.

I saw georg axle over there a while back but never paid much attention, Ill have to check it out a little closer next time.

We actually just did this mod to one we are building for a friend of mine except that we did not "flip" the axle but just "spin" the axle. Same result except the brake likes and vents are still on top. We had to relocate the spring pads anyway to rotate the pinion. It only took about an hour to do once the axle was out from under the truck. It does get closer to center but looks like it will be 5" offset to the drivers side now. The plan is to use a cv type driveshaft and point the rear pinion straigh at the np205 t-case output (north-south / not east-west). It will be a while till we get it running since we are flipping springs, SR, soa conversion, front disc conversion, 350-sm465-np205, fabbing up a rear underbed pto winch, etc, etc, etc

Originally posted by Pin Head
Since you have two FJ25, you could always use one these centered axles. :D

I keep lookin at those.....hmmm, maybe I'll take a serious look at them and figure out a way to modify one of those for mini truck axles into a Cruiser third.

Eskimo, where are the welds, I mean like where did they join the mini truck outters to the Cruiser inners, if you know what I mean. It's hard to see from the pics.

Hey Len, next time you see Georg ask him about that axle housing, maybe he wants to give it to me for my birthday, eh ?:D

Wannabe, It's quite often I tend to overlook the obvious, :emb4: D"OOOOHHHHH !, :eek: Spin the housing, what a great idea! :)

I do have mini-truck outers... There is a weld abour 3/4 over on the right of the tube, just inboard of the leaf spring....

Im pretty simple sometimes :confused: but spin? ya lost me (not hard to do sometimes);)

- never mind I figured it out :D
just a little slow sometimes - but good idea.

More info on how you did this, Eskimo. Very cool. What axle shafts are you running, what brakes, etc.

Originally posted by wngrog


Like Pinhead says, my friends think it looks stupid :flipoff2:

Friends???????????:confused: :confused:


Butch:flipoff2: :flipoff2:

Originally posted by Heavy Metal Toy
More info on how you did this, Eskimo. Very cool. What axle shafts are you running, what brakes, etc.

Minitruck/cruiser hybrid.. cruiser center, sleeved over minitruck axle tubes with mini outers, uses the Mont Carlo disc brake setup... No more damned c-clips, and it holds up for my style of wheeling, which isn't as agressive as some here. If I had to buy it, I would sooner get a D60 or 9". The price is STEEP. LOTS of labor involved. The P/O had it done, but I know the fabricator well.

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