hillbillybob

So I had collected parts to start my SAS and then life got busy and sold all the parts. I did some trading for a HP 44 out of a 76 F-150 and bought back the gears I sold the last time I tried to do this. I was going to narrow and run a waggy shaft on the long side. So I stopped in at the local 4wd shop to ask where the best place to find shafts. And the manager walked me in back to a pallet with a wagoneer 44 with flat top knuckles. So now I own both the popular options for pathfinder SAS!I have a trail gear hanger and Toyota springs. My plan is to get it driving down the road, then put gears/locker and drive line in. Now I'm tossed which one to use, and I'd really like to use one and not combine them because I would like recoupe a little bit of money. So my questions: With a HP do you still need a double cardon driveline? Or will a standard 2 ujoint style be fine? I'm nervous to buy rear springs until I find out how tall the front is going to be, I plan on doing the long arm 5 link as nissan but laid out.

double posted. whoops

The difference in ratios aren't great my any means, but passable. and my pathfinder is my wheeler. in the future its not going to be my daily. This is not the first time the front end has looked like this. last time i went out i caught a log over the top of the tire and folded the entire front of the fender back, caved in the rear passenger quarter panel and broke out the passenger rear quarter window and it now has plexi-glass instead. i removed the interior pieces and reached though with the end of a 2x4 and straightened the majority of it back out.

I have absolutely no doubt there is better options then the route I have the intent of taking. But at the end of the day, I don't have the kind of money is takes to put a rig together as "correctly as possible" I'm looking for maximum effectiveness out of the least amount of money spent. I don't take offense to what youre saying because it is right. But I can't afford that, and I'm not about to put anymore more into the ifs if/when something else goes wrong. If I can find a rear 44 that would be awesome, and then I can plan for better gears. But 5.13's aren't exactly a hot uses item and I don't have a grand or more laying around to spend on axles.

Waggy 44's should have drive flanges in place of locking hubs. But those are easily taken out and I'll replace them with warn units. With the difference in gears, 4.56's will cover more ground in one revolution than the 4.63? So the front end would pull because in one revolution the front will try to travel farther then the rear? Right? Lol

I just checked on my break and it does say HG46. I don't plan on running 4wd on the street. Growing up in the inland NW, even now I don't bother to lock my hubs until there is several inches of snow on the ground. Its still an auto so its a dog all the time so I know running 35's with stock gearing is just a matter of time before the trans lets loose. But I've got an explorer cooler on it to help. And I'm already planning on doing a 5 speed swap when it dies.

I'll check again but I was pretty sure my pathfinder has 4.6 gears.

here's the progress I've made so far. Not sure which direction i want to go with leafs or recently ive been thinking hard about linking it. but at this point im just going to sit on it. Im going to find gears, ive got my eye on a set of 4.56 on a detroit tru-track for $150 on craigslist. in a couple weeks ill check and see if the guy still has it. i know its not ideal to keep stock gearing but it will do for now.

My buddy called me Saturday and said the local pull and save had an 87 wagoneer with the front end still intact ( he's looking for one too but he's out of work so he can't build anything right now). So Sunday I get there first thing and someone had started to pull it and left, springs were taken down and most of u bolts were loose. Make easy work to get it the rest of the way out. I almost got it for 23 bucks because the lady entered it as a rear bumper but was corrected and I ended up getting it for 90. SCORE! But its going to be a bit before I can do anything with it because we just bought a house (but that's good cause its got a shop with power out back) and my wife is 6 months prego and family is first. Tonight I tidied up my shop a little bit and started to cut the old brackets off. It was going well until I took the guard off to get to the shock bracket next to the diff. I'm so used to having a guard on at work that I totally spaced it and gouged my knuckle through gloves on startup. After an hour it wouldn't stop bleeding so we ended up going to the docs for a couple stitches. This axle is gonna be expensive if this keeps up!

265/75/16 treadwright guard dog MT. I just posted about them in the unoffical tire reveiw! theymeasure out to be 32.8 they are only a half in shorter then my 35x12.5x17 dick cepek mountain cats. I love them!!

Seeing stalkers build made me really want to straight axle my pathfinder. I'm in the middle of redoing the front end of my 66 highboy and it presented me a pretty good option. A while back I acquired a 78-79 F-250 HP 44 as its a 8 lug disc brake leaf pad HP 44 with 4.10's. I had planned on swapping this axle into my highboy but the lp that's in it will work with the exhaust much better. My ideas are this 1. I want to leaf spring it for cost, ease, and effective for what I want to do. 2. How much lift does the leaf SAS net and can you still use the majority of the factory rear? 3. Do I narrow this axle and find 6 lug outers to match rear or do I leave full width 8 lug and run 8 lug adapters for rear and make it as wide as full width front? How do you guys feel about the nicer billet adapters/spacers?

Ive got a couple questions because im going to start collecting parts to do a similar setup on the front of my pathfinder. On the front shackles why is the top section have to flare out so far? why couldnt it be flat? does it move the spring in, out, or is it directly under the frame rail? how wide did you know to make/order the front spring mount? how do you know how far down to make/position the mount hole? What exactly do you have to do for steering? i have talked to a guy about crossover and he said i have to be careful with passenger side frame clearance. could i get more specs on the front mount? i had the intentions of fabing all my own parts, im a fabricator by trade so i have access to all the tools i would need to make all of this (minus shock hoops)

when i had 31's on i averaged 13.2 mpg thats also pulling a 2 miles long 10% grade (i believe) everyday. I was getting 225 miles per tank and that was when the needle was even with the E line. i put stock size all seasons on last week have 210 miles on this tank and have little less then 1/4 tank left. *edit* just went 285 on this tank and got 17.4 mpg. It was a $65 fill up! Just a couple months ago it was hardly over 40 wtf!

Bahaha my girlfriend tried to name my pathfinder that. I'm glad I'm not the only one. She said that and I was like uh..not gonna happen!

i wouldnt be worried about breaking the carrier as i would breaking the cv axle or the inner shaft and they are not designed to be strong enough to take the extra stress put on them by the welded diff.

the denali rear steer is a cool idea but ive seen one and its a electric servo turning a rack and pinion. I will say GM has some great ideas that work great in theory, but when put into action they dont work for very long and cause more headaches then anything else.

Independent front adapted to the rear would be messy because you have lower control arms and torsion bars to deal with. In theory my idea would be to take a 44 and mount it backwards and leave the diff offset because if you have the correct angles it shouldn't matter that its angled? It's doing the same thing going angled to the side as up and down? Full hyrdo steer wouldn't be connected to the front, it would be a separate valving assembly with the ability to hit a button to bring back to center ( I know they have rams and valves that can do that) and reverse cut gears to make it drive the same as the front. And of course the wheel wells to be able to turn ( I wasn't thinkin pathfinder because that would be even more ridiculous fab work) its not practical what so ever but its one of those day dreams that would be cool to actually build.

I've always thought rear steer would be sweet, it would have to be full hyrdo. Would it be possible to take a front axle and mount it backwards in the rear and use reverse cut gears from per say a high pinion axle to get it turning the same direction?

welding the diff gears is the cheap way instead of installing a spool. if the front driveline is turning (4 high or 4 low) both cv axles will constantly be turning the same speed. if the hubs are unlocked the cv axle is still turning just not engaged to the wheel. with an open diff and you have it in 4wd and one hub locked, the other side will turn freely not giving any traction (out of time on break at work to explain better)

Manual hubs for sure my friend has a Toyota pickup with a welded front ifs and when wheeling leaves the passenger side engaged for 3 wheel drive and when he needs the extra traction locks the drivers side, I'm trying to locate a set of manual hubs that don't cost a small fortune so I can do the same thing.

I feel a little childish when I say pathy. Although I'm not sure why because my turquoise/green highboy got name the booger by my friends...

Ever since I've had my pathy only the very bottom line of the rear defroster has worked. I finally got tired on not being able to see out the back and looked at it a little closer and I don't see any visible cuts, rub marks, or burnt out spots in the rest of the lines, I know its getting power because the one works but I don't understand why the rest don't work, anyone have burnt out/ lines that don't work? Can I check to see if its getting proper power? Check voltage?