Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Hi all,
Just a question......
I've read that ...say a TJ wrangler to run 33's or above need
to up grade diffs and ratio's usually dana 44's.
Well my question is has any one used GQ or GU patrol diffs.
Is this a cheaper option yes/no or bad idea alltogether.

Cheers Ian.

Heaps of guys run 33's on stock Wrangler diffs, the rear is Dana 44 anyway but the front is a low pinion Dana 30 so it's the weak point (relatively). A re-gear is certainly a good idea though. There is one TJ I know running around with patrol diffs but it wasn't a cheap upgrade.

Cheers
Steve

Ok..cool
A mate and i were having a too many beer debate and silly me
asumed an up grade was needed.
If the rear diff is strong enough can you up grade the
components in the front to match??

Cheers Ian.

strength wise you should be ok with 33's and 35's with some sense when driving ( they survie competion work with sensible upgrades and 35's and smart driving)

BUT !!!

as the 4.0L like to drink petrol the stock gear ratios are a little long and as soone as you up the tyre size you need to regear or you will drop a fair bit of go

additionaly running on to taller gears will increase the chance of breaking things as you have lower crawl ratio meaning you can not drive a obstacle smoothly as easy increasing shock loads and as such break stuff it is worth the investment to regear

I hazard a guess that 90% plus of TJs in Oz with 33's and 35's are running a stock diffs apart from regearing and/or lockers. I only know of owners who do comps putting in a front d44, rear d60, patrol axles, stonger axles etc.

If you set out to break them I'm sure you could but its not like they suddenly start breaking when you put 33's on.

I run 33's and 35's with my stock diffs....locked and re-geared

its fine...havent broken anything to date.

Someone else already asked this question on another forum, so I'll paste my reply to that here:



Yep, I did it, put GQ diffs under my TJ (which I recently sold)

Yes the axles, centres etc are significantly stronger than a factory Dana 30

Yes I broke 4 CVs in the time that I ran the GQ diffs under the vehicle. 1 was at Tuff Truck, 2 were at Cal's place in Berridale in extremely demanding situations where the wheel was completely bound up but I pushed it anyway and the very first one was because we were using the wrong stub axle in the assembly. All breaks but the incorrect stub axle break were when running 38.5x14.5" tyres

No I wouldn't do it again, it's a LOT of work.

Depending on what you want to do with your vehicle and what tyre size you want to run will dictate the best option for you. If you want to comp it, put a D44 in the front and Super44 the front and rear axles. If it's just social wheeling, Super30 the front and see how you go with the rear. If you are twisting rear splines, then perhaps Super44 the rear too.

To swap a GQ diff into a TJ you have to get the front axle cut up and re-tubed to get the centre on the correct side. You've also got to calculate to leave enough room so your front left upper control arm doesn't hit your sump and your drive shaft doesn't hit your front lower control arm mount. My conversion was significantly more difficult because I also stretched the wheelbase, put coil overs in, and did a bunch of other stuff. If you're putting GQ diffs in, presumably you want to comp the vehicle, and presumably you'd want to be running 38-40" tyres. If you're running less than this, there's probably no need.

There's a lot of solutions out there, but me advice is to keep things as simple as possible and keep as many off the shelf products in your car as you can. Once you start getting all custom it gets painful to get spares made up etc. You've got to have a lot of patience to get a setup like this to work well.

another popular option over here is to run a ford 8.8 in the rear but thats here dunno if you guys have anything comparable over there. There relatively cheap and come with disk brakes and such.

I think the 8.8 is quite similar in strength to the d44 we get stock in the rear here in Aus.