Didn't ask if an rvc would slide in im planing on getting aftermarket shafts that convert from stick to 5 on 5-/2 not going rcvs, I know with 60's the ford knuckle works but Chevy doesn't work with rcvs

 

Is there an effective difference between what you can do on an HP 30 with RCVs vs what you can do on an HP30 with a good set of chromolly shafts?

either way, with 4.88 gears you're limiting factor is probably the pinion size.

I say that as a guy running an Hp30 with 36" iroks and 4.88s. my axle is in process of getting WJ knuckle/brake swap, and an Artec truss

might want to look at that route. and the artec truss is pretty cheap.

 

It will be getting a truss. I'm not sold on the RCV's. If they won't work, that's fine. I can go with other shafts and good joints. I really like the idea of having lockouts for on the street plus I can get all the outer parts for pretty much nothing so the stubs and knuckles is really all I am paying for. I like the fact also that I can run better steering pretty cheap. I know building a D30 is like polishing a turd but I have seen them hold up to some serious abuse with the right combination of parts. The rear is going to be a 8.8 with a Super 88 kit and converted to 6 lug.

 

just my $.02, its not even about if they will or wont fit... they are $1100 for a set of axle shafts... the shafts will last forever, BUT they are so far beyond the capacaties of the other components that the money/strength just doesnt add up.... especially when for like 1/3 of that cost you can buy a great set of chromo shafts (with lifetime warranty)....

and the WJ knuckle swap gets you the steering you are after AND bigger brakes. and you are still more than $500 < the cost of the RCVs.

only thing missing is the lockout, but... you can build a lot stronger axle with lockouts, steering, strength for less than the cost of those shafts...

theres turd polishing (which im guilty of myself) and then theres turd diamond encrusting

if my opinions arent wanted anymore, I'll shut up!

 

That should hold up fine man. If not RCV, I'd recommend Superior shafts with their hardened u joints.....very resilient stuff. The ARB should prevent carrier deflection and the only other worry are the gears....you may want to look into getting them cryo treated to try to move the weak link away from them. Just keep good ball joints in it and run it.

 

If you've already invested in gears & a locker & nice shafts & trussed the axle tube and C's, then don't bother starting over from scratch - you already have a nice light high-clearance axle with good strength as long as you're not putting monster power through the smallish ring & pinion.

The Reid knuckles convert the outers to Dana 44 stuff so you get the bigger brakes, ditch the unit bearings, get lockout hubs, and get crossover highsteer. I don't think RCV joints will fit through the knuckle holes because they use Chevy style spindles with a smaller opening than the Ford 44s have, but you should still be able to run those big CV joints you just have to install the knuckle after installing the shaft. If you already have nice inner axles then just run some nice Chevy 44 stub shafts and CTM Ujoints and call it done.

 

The axles have 4.88's and Solid covers, that's it. Otherwise I can build them the way I want. This is not going to be a trailer queen, sold the trailer to fund the Jeep purchase since the buggy was already gone. I want to be able to drive it to work or where ever I want and wheel when time allows. So it has to be street legal and inspectable in Pa. As far as power goes, the stock 4.0 will stay for now and eventually I will buy another Atlas 4spd and put it in. I can send the gears out to be done when I do the locker install. I think overall it should hold up fine as long as I don't shock load the shit out of it.

 

Have you thought about the WJ brake swap? I dunno if the Knuckles themselves are any better than stock. I've been running them for a couple of years now on 38 kevlars with nil problems. The brakes will lock up the 38s on dry pavement.

 

37's on those dinky TJ/WJ unit bearings scare me. I wish Jeep equipped them with a proper, separate spindle/bearing/hub assembly and lockout hubs like Dana 44's have. I guess they just wanted to save on cost, at the expense of strength and serviceability.

 

I helped a club member set up an axle like that.Dana 30 outter knuckle with unit bg. to Reid outter knuckles. Used the small bgn. Chev spindle and ford hubs to get 6 lug.The ford hubs and rotors can come from the Ford I beam so they are easy to find.All worked great, alittle more matinance on this set up but much cheeper to repair in case of a bgn. falure.I dont think you will see much millage increase on the street with the lockout hubs but it is stronger with big tires & a lot of ofsett.With good alloy shafts you should be good.(Ring & pinion become the weak point)The late 30 & 44 Ujoints are not bad, what usually happens yoke on the stock shaft open up and caps spin, throw out the Cclip and brake the yoke.(use full circle snap rings on Ujoint caps)

 

Anyone else have this setup? I am looking to do reids on my rubi 44 and was curious if the master cylinder was strong enough to make an effective difference with the bigger rotors. I tallied up a rough material cost and came up with about $1500 using new parts. Does this seem accurate?

 

are you converting from a d30 to a d44, a rubi should already have a d44. so your saying upgrading from a jeep d44 to Chevy/ford d44 y/n

What tire size planned larger or smaller than 39"

 

There's a ton of misinformation in this thread.

1) D30 unit bearings are pretty stout for their size.

2) Unit bearings aren't bad. At all. They just aren't rebuildable (or at least easily) and some people think that's "bad".

3) RCV shafts are the shit and don't cost $1100 if you know what you're doing. Mine were less than 9 bones shipped to me, new, from RCV.

4) This argument comes up over and over and over. The D30 and Rubi 44 were never meant to handle 37s. Can they be built to handle them? Yeah, mostly, but not for hardcore use.

5) 37s are crossroad tire size and shouldn't be used on 1/4 or even 1/2 ton junk without an agreement on short term life expectancy.

Buy tons or some equivalent and give up on the baby axles. :smokin:

 

1) D30 unit bearings are pretty stout for their size.

2) Unit bearings aren't bad. At all. They just aren't rebuildable (or at least easily) and some people think that's "bad".

Unitbearings can handle vertical loads just fine. But the close-spaced bearings within the unitbearing assembly can't handle much of any lateral/torsional loading. Every half-inch of wheel offset exponentially increases the load on those bearings. Anyone who's worked at a 4x4 shop can tell you how often TJ/XJ/YJ/etc unitbearings wear out as soon as wide tires or wheels are installed. The unitbearings can't handle wide wheels & tires because they weren't designed for wide wheels and tires.

The bearing spacing on a separate spindle & hub assembly like what a standard Dana 44 has is essentially impervious to any wheel offset available. The wide bearing spacing simply doesn't care what wheels & tires you run.

I actually prefer the sealed, replace-it-as-a-unit unitbearing design over the individual components of a spindle & hub assembly, but the unitbearings are many times weaker for anyone running 3.5" or 2.5" backspaced wheels, or anything wider than 7-inch wheels. The only unitbearings worth a damn are the 2005+ SuperDuty unitbearings, but even they have super-narrow bearing spacing so they can't handle any wheel offset either. If you're putting one of those full-width axles under a Jeep and keeping it narrow with 6" backspacing, then those bearings will last forever. But as soon as you put wider wheels and bigger tires on them, they start to lose all their strength.

If you've already put a ton of money into a TJ axle and you aren't going to go bigger than 37's or 39's, the Dana 44 conversion knuckles are an easy way to address the remaining weak links in that axle using standard off-the-shelf parts and minimal complexity. But if you're going to enter King of the Hammers or regularly do impressions of Bo & Luke Duke, then you ought to just run a kingpin Dana 60.

 

I think you mean the bearings don't like the bending moment created from the leverage of the offset wheels. You're right, they aren't design for wide wheels and tires, however, assuming kingpins are the best design is not correct. Also, the Ford stuff isn't the only option. Chevy and Dodge have been making unit bearings for a long time and are very capable for our application including KOH.

Shortcuts in engineering lead to premature failure. Design your axles accordingly and your parts will last a long time. Bring your moment of inertia (AKA, center of mass) of your wheel as close to the center line of the bearings as possible. Typical spindles are the same way, they just have more bearing spacing, like you said.

The unit bearings are not actually weaker. Everything can be broken, everything can be worn out. Spidertrax uses uniballs instead of kingpins or ball joints. They survive KOH, but they can still be worn out. See where I'm going with this? Its about building your rig around the engineering and design in place already.

Same arguement as always, people step up to 1 tons because the axles can hold up to any design flaws (like large offsets and hard landings) but the real solution is just design and engineering.

Chromos, RCVs, new knuckles, and any other upgrades are just big band-aids for the initial problem of weak axles and big tires.

go big :grinpimp:

 

The jk unit bearing is a better bearing than the tj/yj for many reasons, and can be adapted easily to a tj if your thinking about building up a 30/44. Demand has brought out some good products for those not looking into the 1 ton game. RCV's take that whimpy ujoint right out of the picture and you can bump up to 32 spline outers and jk unit bearings if you do them at the same time.

 

I don't mean to be a dick here but I have to ask -

where is the tech data on the claim that the JK UB stuff is stronger than the TJ UB stuff? I understand the increased spline count but I am not seeing how they stuffed a different/bigger bearing setup in the same size package.

 

If you hold them side by each you can see the difference in construction, also the jk bearings are designed so they don't rely on the axle shaft to hold them together. You could break an outer stub and drive home without ub failure.

 

Again, not trying to be a dick here, but that's not factual evidence. I actually want to see the load ratings and differences internally.

Also, the TJ stuff doesn't rely on the axle shaft. I have ran TJ UB without stubs. Not quite sure what you mean there.

 

Jeep claims the unit bearing to be stronger and even though they fit in the same location, my personal observation tells me that there is enough of a difference to agree with that claim. As far as the ub falling apart, I have a couple of my own that did that with a broken stub shaft shortly after the break. The 90-99 yj/tj/xj take the same pressed together unit bearing. The 2000+ tj is a different part number but besides the difference in backspacing didn't look any different than the older units. The JK ub has a noticeable machined edge to hold it together. My point of my post was if you were going to stay with the unit bearing knuckles and looking to get the most from them, go with the rcv axle/ jk outer setup. While the differences may not be like going to a d60, there is an advantage.

 

Unit bearings don't like anything but a straight vertical load on them. This is why modern unit bearing equipped vehicles have wheels with lots of backspacing, whereas older rigs with a separate spindle and hub assembly with big, wide-spaced bearings had much less backspacing (much more offset) in the wheels.

If you're swapping a wide axle with highly-backspaced oem-style wheels under a narrow Jeep, you're usually fine with unit bearings. But lots of people have already invested big bucks into their Jeep's Dana 30 or Rubicon 44, and aren't interested in starting all over from square 1 with another axle that's heavier, has less ground clearance, and requires lots of work to install. If you're happy with your Jeep axle but want to upgrade to 1/2-ton or 3/4-ton brakes and lockout hubs, and you're tired of the puny unit bearings and goofy Y-link steering, these conversion knuckles make it easy and use all standard Dana 44 parts that are available from any junkyard or auto parts store. It's a BIG step up in strength, without any of the negatives associated with a full axle swap.

Is it the perfect upgrade for everyone? No - nothing ever is; there are a lot of people out there who would be better served by a Kingpin 60 or even bigger axle. But if you want to upgrade your Dana 30 or Rubicon 44 to how it should have been built from the factory, these knuckles make it real easy to do so, with no cutting or welding or proprietary parts required.

 

just came accross this article linked from Reid's site documenting a parts list that JP Magazine used to setup these knuckles on a currie fabricated housing.

look at all the parts/prices associated with this... I just cant imagine justifying all that onto a dana 30 or even a Rubi 44 housing. if you're doing this all from new parts its ballpark $1500ish by just in my head quickie scan of the parts/prices:

Project JR 2.0 1999 Jeep Cherokee - Jp Magazine

 

Hence why I've been saying its not worth it and to find a new axle. People should realize how easy it is to buy a bracket kit and mirror the setup from a stock D30 onto a new axle. Even a Waggy 44 is a superior upgrade. If you're worried about the low pinion 44 gear set, get a K4 kit from Jantz Engineering and use a gear set from a JK 44. Those gear sets can stand 37" tires easily and you can now get RCV shafts for the Waggy or go with chromos and good joints.

Before anyone says "go buy junkyard parts and Reid knuckles", just remember that if you're already in the junk yard, get a real axle. It's really not that much more work and money. After I cut off my D30 brackets and made new ones to push the axle 3" forward, it really didn't make sense to do this all over again with another D30 but I was already too far into it.

A JK HP44 is also another option but again, you're doing exactly what I said above. So, for future TJ/XJ/LJ owners that want better front axle options, here are two things to take away:

1) You are going to spend a lot of money to get anything worth its weight ($5K+)

2) You are going to do the work yourself and spend about the same amount as you would building a stock D30. Might have to spend a little more on getting someone to weld the brackets on if you can't do it, but its a wash in the end.

There's no easy way to do this gents. Hence the reason why its considered hardcore

 

Bumping this.... Is there a track width (wms) increase with this conversion? I'm trying to work with what I have as much as I can and keep weight down and clearance up. I just put some 37" kevlar's on and have NO plans to go larger.

Edit- found it, +.8"