Thanks for chiming in max! I'm more interested in keeping the ifs for now with the 10b centersection. I may pick up an axle and start investigating myself. As for width, I'm trying to keep it to a minimum so I don't need to make new longer control arms and such.
Good luck with that. The AAM front in the H3's are pretty compact. I don't see any way of building a 10b front that will be anywhere near that narrow.
With a 10b rear chopping it making custom flanges and c clips my main confusion is axle seals. Is there any main things Id have to do? Is it just a bearing retainer and seal? I'm kinda new to the seal and bearing deal.
Chopping up my own 10b is fine and even setting up gears. It's making sure axle plunge is correct, setting up seals and mounting (which I have a few ideas)
Biggest thing is making sure there is minimal radial movement inside the seal. This means the shaft needs to be supported by a bearing relatively close to the seal. Using the side gear to support the other end is usually adequate.
In any normal SA application the wide bearing spacing of the 10-bolt is a plus. But its a handicap for what we're trying to do...very little room under the H3, and by the time you add a bearing, seal and flange to the IFS...its gonna get wide (maybe too wide). Hopefully the shorter 1500 half-shafts will allow you to keep it out of the oil pan.
Unfortunately, the overall dimensions of a D44 housing are basically the same. I don't think you will get either one to fit into the space of the AAM 7, width-wise.
While the 8.5 and 8.6 share the same ring-gears...I noticed the late-model 8.6 housing under the rear of the H3 is clearly a cleaner, beefier casting. Perhaps this is due to modern CNC manufacturing process rather than 70's slide-rule technology?...I'm not sure.
It's mainly modern casting technology. In the past, molds were simple sand casting molds, which were prone to core shift. Thus, margins in cross sections had to be included to assure adequate casting thickness in all areas regardless of core shift. Modern parts are done using more advanced sand casting methods that can maintain much higher accuracy. This allows near "net-shape" parts and very close control of cross sectional thicknesses. This allows the manufacturer to make the housing lighter, with ribbing in needed areas for structural rigidity. Thus, the newer castings are certainly "cleaner", but not necessarily stronger.
But it makes sense to me to use the latest, most advanced parts you can find. I would think that after 35 years...the H3's 8.6 probably has quite a bit of improvements built into it that might not be obvious to the naked eye.
Only real improvement is the larger carrier bearings, and maybe the extra structural ribs between the center and the tube bosses. As I mentioned earlier, they don't seem to be any more rugged than their earlier counterparts. They are adequate for their purpose in the H3 (up to 35" tires), but GM really should be using the 9.5" axle in their current 1/2 ton trucks.
The pumpkin is cast without the leaf-spring perch, which may actually benefit somebody trying chop and add a bearing/seal to it. At first, I thought having the extra meat of the perch might help, and you could use it to support a bearing. But after cutting apart a front 10-bolt housing and looking closely at it...I think the smaller RWD pumpkin might allow for easier chopping. Try to use the tube if possible, rather than milling deep into the casting. I don't see a problem running this axle in the front position. As someone else pointed out...all the low-pinion stuff runs on the coast-side of the teeth anyway, and they've been doing this for 50 years. I have no idea what effect this would have on a used gear-set (that had been previously ran in the other direction)...but, its worth a try.
In theory, the coast side is weaker. In practice, stock shafts and joints (and usually stock
size alloy shafts) always fail first. The only time the R&P starts to become an issue is when aftermarket large spline alloy shafts are used with big tires, i.e. 37 spline chromoly shafts in D60's running 42"+ tires. Then you start to see R&P failures. Whether a high pinion would do better in this case is unknown, although measurements have shown that there is considerably more carrier deflection in a LP front vs a HP front. The typical fix for this is the Jana 76 mod, where a D70 carrier, ring, and pinion are installed in the D60 housing. The D70 has a 10.5" ring gear vs the 9.75" gear in the 60. Thus far, guys who have had repeated D60 R&P failures have not had failures with the 76 mod, AFAIK. What's really cool is that there is also a Jana 54 mod, where the 9" Dana 50 R&P is installed in the D44 housing. You can read about the Jana 76 and Jana 54 mods here:
:link: It should be noted that these mods are only needed for someone who is routinely reaching the limit of their D60 or D44 R&P. In other words, 99.99% of us will never need this.
I wouldn't complain about $950 for one of these. Remember, you're saving a grand by having the E-locker and matching gears already installed in it. Not only that but, all of your bearings, seals, and set-up is already done for you. You can simply un-load housing...do the chop...clean it up...and put everything back it the same position. I say this only because its a "prototype", and everything at this point is experimental. You can always do a re-gear to both axles after testing your IFS with stock gears.
I dunno... $950 sounds kinda high to me. I'm asking barely more than half that for a 9.5" axle with an E-Locker, and I only paid $300 for a 10.5" full floater with factory disk brakes and a factory G80 locker... I guess it's whatever the market will bear.
Just so you guys know - re-gearing the rear end in these is a Pita - do it once. If you remember, we had to do some dental work to get the cross pin in on the 5:13's. That will add to the cost. It's tedious and time consuming. (For those who won't be doing it themselves).
10b axles aren't that bad. Regearing Dana axles sucks way worse because the shims are located behind the press-fit carrier bearings. Setup bearings significantly relieve the pain in this case.
The housing we used, by luck was a HD D44. We looked at the HP D44 TTB and it would have been perfect, but we didn't want to mess with tubing it.
The front is also a 35 spline ARB, with Cry-o treated star splined chomoly stub shafts.
The HD D44 is a good piece for a front SAS as well since it has the heavy 1/2" wall tubes. Only thing better is a 60.
I didn't think swapping the rear gears was too tough. Grinding the tooth took me all of 10 minutes with a die-grinder, once I found out that was the fix (thanks Bebe). A bigger hassle was simply getting the axle shafts out! The ABS rings are glued onto the axle shafts about 6" from the ends, and they don't pull-out like normal C-clip shafts. I recommend prying them out from inside the window of the carrier...and not from the flange end. I destroyed both of my axle seals with a pry bar. No biggy...my GM dealer had the seals in stock but, in retrospect...if you pry at the C-clip ends, you won't mangle the seals out at the ends of the tubes.
The first time I worked on an H3 rear axle, I was puzzled that the shafts didn't simply slide out when the c-clips were removed (and pushing the shafts in far enough to get the clips off was a PITA as well). Wasn't 'till later that I figured out why. Anyway, yes, using a pry bar on the end of the shaft inside the carrier is the best way to get them out.
Once you get the shafts out...you get to wrestle around with the actuator coil on the Eaton locker. You have to sort of disconnect it and leave it in place, so you can pull the carrier out. Its not too tough...but a second set of fingers helps. After that...its pretty much a normal gear-swap.
Not sure what you mean by "wrestle around with the actuator coil". You use a small pin to release the terminal ends from the plastic connector, then push the rubber plug/feed-thru back into the housing. After that, no problems. To date, I have done 5 E-locker installs (2 8.5" 10b front axles, 1 8.6" 10b axle (Alrock's H3), and 2 9.5" 14b axles), and I have R&Red and rebuilt two more E-lockers (both in H3's). Once you get the hang of it, they are easy.
