Discussion of built driveline

[eaglefreek]

Is it worth the trouble? I've never heard of anyone breaking the front Dana 30.

Ever heard of anyone running an Atlas 4 speed and 42's with an Eagle D30? ;-)

Considering that a 3.54 for the TH425 diff is going to run me $1500, this is not a path to pursue lightly, so I'll probably have to break the D30 first.

x2 on that. also whole crossmember will have to be modified, it also looks very heavy, not to mention kinda ugly:} good luck regardless! gz

Of course it's heavy, there's a lot of steel in it. That's the whole idea!
The whole crossmember wouldn't need to be modified,  just the part that interferes. ;-)

Big drawbacks: no locker available; geometry of the cover means that if I slide it over a rock I'm likely to get a fluid leak.

I didn't realize you were going with 42's. I would look into what they are doing with some of the King Of Hammers trucks with IFS.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I was mostly joking about that.

With the NV3550, NP229 and 3.54's, my crawl ratio will be 37:1... not bad for an Eagle. However, Dana 30's are not known for liking a lot of torque. If I go to a 241OR or Atlas, my low range will go to 4:1 or more, which will put my crawl ratio at 56.7:1, which is starting to get somewhat serious.

[The Dark Side of Will]

With being stuck on the diff again, my dad and I went for the transfer case. I found a manual for the NP229 online here:
http://oljeep.com/np229/NP229_manual.pdf

and it was useful in making sure that we had things in order before bolting on the rear case half.
The thing the manual specifies that we need to do is shim the end play of the rear output, which is accomplished by shims under the tailshaft housing.

Here's the reason I needed to take the T-case apart:



This photo shows two things:
1. That we bored the cored hole for the low range shift rail
2. All 12 of the tail housing attaching bolt locations are incorporated into the casting

However, only 6 of the 12 are tapped in any given unit. The Wagoneer had the wrong six tapped. If I were to use the Wagoneer rear case half in the Eagle, the VSS/Speedo cable would hit the body.
So I need to use the Eagle case half and bore it for the low range shift rail OR use the Wagoneer case half and drill/tap the holes for the Eagle orientation of the tail shaft housing. Since my dad and I can use the Bridgeports where he works, we used the Eagle case half because it only involved one hole.

And here's the unit assembled except for the tailshaft housing bolts and the rear output yoke:

[eaglefreek]

Good job. When I did the 229 swap, I had to drill and tap the 6 holes since I didn't have access to the proper equipment to take care of the one hole my 128.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Yeah, if all you have is a drill press, you'd definitely have a better chance of success by drilling and tapping the cored holes on the 229 case half. You could even do one, then use the tailshaft housing as a drill guide for the rest.

I'm close to wrapping up the front diff overhaul here: http://forums.amceaglesden.com/index.php?topic=43409.0

So I pulled the D44 out of the shed and took it over to a local shop where my dad's known the proprietor for a couple of decades.
He let us use a great big blasting cabinet to clean the axle up.



And then I dumped most of a can of gloss black epoxy spray paint from McMaster-Carr on it:



Since it's 90+ degrees out in VA today, it cured in a couple of hours.
Next up: disk brakes

[The Dark Side of Will]

My current combo of NV3550 + NP 229 + 3.54 axles gives me a 37.0:1 crawl ratio
That's 4.01 first with 2.61 low for 10.46 at the driveshafts into 3.54 axles.

However, if I used an NSG370 with 4.46 first and 241OR with 4.0 low, I'd have 17.84 at the driveshafts and a 63.1:1 crawl ratio. That's getting reasonably serious... and it would *BOLT* *IN*.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Separated the caliper brackets from the dust shields; somehow forgot to snap a "blasted" pic. I'll grab a "painted" pic in a couple of weeks after I get back from London. you can see the modded bolt patterns in both.

[The Dark Side of Will]

The original Dana 44 non-clip hub end component stack:

From left to right: backing collar (not sure why it's not touching the bearing...), bearing, seal, bearing retainer.



Modified stack: backing collar, new bearing, seal, spacer ring, bearing retainer



And the whole shebang installed, including brake caliper brackets and dust shields:



The left axle has pretty decent pitting on the seal surface and needs a speedy sleeve. If that hadn't been the case, I'd have put both together tonight.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Installed a speedy sleeve on the other D44 axle. The sleeve went on until it bottomed, but was shorter than the sealing journal on the axle. As a consequence, the inner lip of the double lip seal is running on the old pitted surface. I guess I'll have to watch for fluid leaks.

I painted the flywheel. The clutch will rub off the paint it doesn't like and then when I (or some other unlucky SOB) pulls it apart in a few years, the flywheel won't be rusty.

CarQuest gave me Dorman 14557 for flywheel bolts, but this is WRONG. This package has 7/16-20 x 7/8" bolts. The real deal is 1/2-20 x 7/8". ARP has those, but I guess I can wait until Monday to find out if CarQuest can get them for me. The Dorman website does not list flywheel bolts for the Jeep application, so there was some kind of error in delivering this kit to me.



I have also decided that I'd like to use an Eaton e-locker in the D44, and maybe a Detroit TrueTrac in the D30. I came back from Afghanistan a bit over a month ago, and will pursue those items when I get another job.

[The Dark Side of Will]

ARP 1/2-20 x 7/8" bolts arrived... will probably get the flywheel and clutch installed on Friday.

Otherwise I'm SLOWLY getting everything together. I had to order some shims from McMaster to get the T-case output shaft end play correct. Those are in and the measurement looks good relative to spec. Spec is 0.003 to 0.012, with a target of .006. This ended up at 0.003, so I'm happy. Pulling a 0.005 shim would have resulted in 0.008, so whatev.



Need to install the shaft seal in the tailshaft housing, then break out the anaerobic goo and do the final installation. I have a new rubber splined sealing washer to go on the end of the shaft, after which I can install the yoke and declare that the rear output is complete.

I have a seal for the front output... I should probably just pull the front yoke and install it, but it's not nearly as easy as the rear yoke. It'll be way harder in the car, so on the bench if the obvious place to do it.

I'm deciding whether or not I want to yank the stock vent fitting and tap it for a pipe fitting (and then to A/N plumbing?). It already rotates while installed, so the sealing of the fitting to the tailshaft housing is questionable at best.

I'm going to run all the vents from all four gearboxes (trans, T-case, front diff & rear axle) to the PCV system so that I can ford modest water crossings without worry. The road to a friend's house flooded more than I'm comfortable fording in a Fiero a few years back, so I want to be sure an event like that doesn't stop me again.

All Eagles (& a lot of Jeeps?) use a 36 tooth speedometer gear with 3.54 axle ratio. My dad found a guy who had one and bought it. I will probably use a DRAC or the JagsThatRun VSS adapter to provide a VSS signal to the ECU, while retaining the mechanical speedo, for now. I'd like to swap to an electronic speedometer eventually, but the Eagle instrument panel is really hard to remove, so that has to be more carefully considered.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Found all the case half and tail housing bolts and torqued up the tail housing. The torque spec is 23 ftlbs. I used Loctite 518 anaerobic sealant.





The vent connection is loose. I'm not sure whether to try to seal it back up, or to pull it out and tap the hole for 1/8 NPT. I will plumb all of the vents (trans, T-case, front diff, rear axle) to the PCV system so that I don't get water inside those units if I ford a stream.



At this point I just need to install a new sealing washer on the end of the output shaft and install the yoke. Then I need to pull the front yoke to replace the seal and sealing washer and it'll be all good.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Had a fun time getting the transmission mated to the engine.

AMC engine to transmission dowels have limited availability. Dura-Bond AD148 is the only part I found that does the job. Summit carries them. I snagged a pair.

At first I couldn't get the engine & trans to fully mate. The contact spring in the slave cylinder was apparently enough, in conjunction with the mechanical advantage of the throw out fork and friction in the splines to prevent me from shaking the transmission on that last 1/2".

On a hunch I unbolted the slave... it went on easy peasy.

Now 556# as pictured.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I bolted up the modded NP 229 T-case:



I *briefly* had a scare about having to pull it back off for repair because I couldn't shift it, but once I understood the force required on the linkage and the order in which the shifters had to operate, it worked fine.

The above doesn't show it, but it's on a leveler as well:



~650# as pictured. By the time I add the diff, the alternator, the A/C compressor and the air compressor, the powertrain is going to be 800#, and that doesn't even include the rear axle!

I also installed the rear output yoke with a yoke seal (It's a factory fixed yoke):

[The Dark Side of Will]

As noted previously in this thread, the diff snout bracket is the only part that needs to be made in order to do a 4.0 swap.

My initial takes on it ended up with very minimal clearance to the stock 4.0 manifold and stock Cherokee downpipe that I have.

I finally had a realization of a simple change I could make that would dramatically increase clearance to the downpipe.

Before:





During:



After:



Here's how it fits to the downpipe:







Here's how the downpipe fits around the engine and transmission:



And how it clears the bellhousing: