Hubs vs Drive Flanges

BigClay

BigClay

Knower of useless ZJ things
Joined
Sep 24, 2008
Location
Winston-Salem
Looking for some opinions on both. I have a 93 ZJ that I am swapping a waggy 44 into the front. I will be running 35s and about 5" of lift. It is not a DD by any means, but I do drive it on the road occasionally. So with this setup, what do you recommend, hubs, or drive flanges? Why? :beer:
 
how true is your front driveshaft? thats the first question i would ask myself.
i grenaded a warn hub last season and went to drive flanges. front shaft is a little out of round, and 5.29s make it feel a lot out of round. Workin on that right now tho. And if i grenade an inner shaft, i'll have to pull the flange off. Where if i had hubs, i'd just unlock it and keep going. Little stuff thats not that irritating, versus hubs that go for double or triple the cost(mines a toyota tho). Its 6 one way, half dozen the other.
 
If you do run flanges, make sure that your t-case has the ability to be placed in 2-Lo. I had flanges on my old truck, and on the easy sections of Uhwarrie that didn't require 4x4, but still needed to go slow, it quickly became a pain the the ass with the reduced turning radius.
 
Have you not been happy with the drive flanges on your stock dana 30?

I hate locking hubs, and would run drive flanges on any and everything, DD included.
 
LOL, I knew I would get plenty of opinions :)

I have never had hubs before, so I am trying to figure out what route to go with this waggy 44.
 
I think I am going to replace the flanges with hubs, and keep the flanges as trail spares. I think this will give me the best on/off road driving. Also I think this will help the stock shafts since I don't plan upgrading the shafts at this point.
 
I run flanges on my 60. I drove it from Hudson to Hickory with a welded front diff. While I was at work I pulled one flange and the drive home was much better.
With a 44 and 35s I'd just run with the Spicer hubs.
 
I don't understand why people would think you should need to pull a slug out to drive whether you have a locker or not. With a welded diff or a spool it would help, but is a 100% waste of time on a locked front axle. It makes zero difference in driveability, except you might hear the clicking on the locker ratcheting, and get marginally lower fuel economy.

I put many 10s of thousands on DD miles on a locked, flanged front axle, with NO ill effects.
 
Mine was welded....steered like hell going into and comming out of curves
 
All tj's and newer xj's basically have flanged d30's and they run fine with lunch box locker in the front. The locker will work just the same as it does in the rear you may hear a little bit of clicking but that is hte way it is designed.
 
BigClay said:
I think I am going to replace the flanges with hubs, and keep the flanges as trail spares. I think this will give me the best on/off road driving. Also I think this will help the stock shafts since I don't plan upgrading the shafts at this point.
Click to expand...
This is what I do.. I'm happy with it so far.
 
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