Axle Swap
So this was the moment I had been waiting years and saving my money for, the proper axle swap. You guys don't know this, but about 3 years ago I had secured a set of JK axles (Front and Rear) from a 2012 Jeep JK Rubicon. I was so excited about these and ready to put them in my Jeep until I realized how much work was going to be required to make them fit properly. This forced me to put them aside and wait for additional funds. As life happens, This swap never came to fruition. I made a deal with my son, stating that if he got top shelf grades in school, I'd pay for him to play travel Ice Hockey. At the time I didn't know that travel ice hockey was 5K per season!!!! When he came to me with a stellar report card, I had to honor my deal. This meant the Axles went on Craigslist and migrated to northern California and I had the resources to cover his sporting expenses. This also put me back to square one, saving and hiding away coins whenever possible to attack this upgrade at a later date.
Once I finally had the resources together I started shopping around for the best options. I was pretty set on doing the JK swap, and was about ready to pull the trigger when I was chatting the guys from Currie Enterprises. I had already purchased their steering system for the XJ, and was very pleased with that, so I went over to their shop for the full tour. When I arrived, I was talking to their sales guy and he was showing me the differences between the factory axles and their axles, needless to say, I was very impressed with the engineering and detail in their offerings. Take a look at these photos....
This is a photo of the factory Jeep housing and axle tube cut-away
Here is a photo of the Currie Rock Jock 44 housing cut-away
I was pretty set on doing a Dana 44 upgrade all the way around. I had a CV jointed Dana 30 in the front, and an aluminum center sectioned Dana 44 in the rear. My truck weighs an absolute ton compared to a factory vehicle, so I wanted to go with axles that were up to the task and could handle the additional weight. One thing that I also had my heart set on was the electric lockers from Eaton. I loved the idea of the electric lockers in the factory Jeep JK Rubicon Axles.
After telling the Currie guys that I didn't need the Rock Jock 60's (Which looked really awesome by the way), I figured them to be overkill, I decided to pull the trigger and go with a set of Rock Jock 44's front and back. I decided to do 4:10 gears with the E-Locker from Eaton. This should make it cruise along the freeway at 2K RPM's at 70 mph with a 33" tire.
Looking at the above cut-away photos, you can see major differences in both the center section and in the axle tube diameter and thickness. The Rock Jock 44 center sections take the same JK gear set which has an 8.5" ring gear, which is larger than the standard Dana 44 ring gear.
Here is a list of all the components I needed to get to complete the Axle build
The list included:
Motive Gear Ten Factory Front and rear 4340 Chromoly axles
Eaton Electric Lockers
4:10 front and rear Gear sets (hard to find actually, as they are the same as the factory JK axle gear set)
Install kits for front and rear
