HRD has not died! Crew cab pics, disconect pics

[weewillywinky]

inter axle disconnects

thanks HRD, your reply helps me understand the axle dynamics better.

as for which of the two rear axles usually does the driving... i suspect it makes no difference to me in the long run. front-rear... rear-rear... as long as i can engage BOTH of them when needed ... and I'd just as soon do it from INSIDE the cab, if I had a choice.

would one of you kind and knowledgable gentlemen enlighten me as to benefits/ disadvantages of driveshaft disconnects vs end of axle disconnects vs 'whatever else is really good."

thanks in advance.

 

[OPCOM]

... ... Even around 500 bucks they will be hard to sell. You can do an axle/hub for around 500 as well. The ultimate is two lock outs on the rear-rear and a disconect.

Either way If you need parts I have them, Lock outs, axles, and soon disconects. Any one interested in a trade?

I'd like to hear more. I like the benefits of the front lockouts. -but without the ability to disconnect the driveshaft with the air shift, the full benefit is not realized.

Right -just like the front lockouts + the air-shift, it would be only half the job to unlock the rear axle shafts from the hubs, and still have to spin all the mass in the rearmost diff. Same as disconnecting the rearmost driveshaft, the tires then have to spin the mass.

There was also discussion that it would be necessary to unlock both sides of the rear axle, not just the ring gear side, to prevent wear of the small gears inside differential (forget what they are called).

 

[Recovry4x4]

OK, I'll take a stab at this. Last question first. You would not need to unlock both rear hubs to gain the benefit of doing so. The little gears are called spider gears. They will not suffer any wear because the differential is still spinning via the inter axle drive shaft. The benefit of this is to alleviate the different rollout of the two differentials when cornering and from unmatched tire circumference. The same could be had by using the driveshaft disconnect, its just a different appraoch to the same issue. The ultimate benefit would be gained by coupling 2 lockouts and the driveshaft disconnect. Effectively you would elminate the rotating mass of the one differential and axle shafts as well as alleviating the rollout issue. Now as Patrick referred to the spider gears, if you unlock only one rear axle and use the driveshaft disconnect, you will be spinning the spiders and not lubing them. They will fail eventually. Either go with one lockout, the diff connect or both hubs and the disconnect. BTW, the driveshaft disconnect has the advantage of being controlled from inside the cab, a huge plus.

 

[hot rod deuce]

Thanks man, you are my new spokes man!

 

[cranetruck]

As far as which axle to power, I think it's important that the first tires to encounter an obstacle are driven up and over it, say a curb, instead of having rear tires trying to push it up and over.
That's why I use front wheel drive and forward rear axle drive on my deuce. A 4x6 in other words and for extreme off-road, 6x6.

A locking differential would be very desirable in at least one of the 3 diffs.
I have used single axle drive for thousands of highway miles and the tire wear on the driving tires is much much worse than on any other set. Here an interaxle differential would shine (like commercial truck tractors).