For me, I will never do JY axles again. I'll just buy new axles equipped how I want them. I think alot of it has to do with my OCD and meticulous nature.
Remind me,
Which JY axles you have?
What you did or had done to them?
Who did the work on them?
What you don't like about them?
I should qualify this with the fact that I am very happy with the axles now and how they are performing but I wish I had done things differently. Namely, single source. I should have just worked with Allsouth and not had 2 different parties involved. Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to do it myself so I have to rely on someone else. Here are some highlights of my saga.
I got a Dana 60 front and Dana 70 rear. I sourced them through Hudlow. He sent me pics of the axles and then we spoke on the phone a few times. I made a trip to his shop (2 hrs one way) looked at the physical axles and then we discussed a plan and cost and made a deal. A few weeks later I went and picked them up and then dropped them at Allsouth for them to put under the Jeep. The deal with Hudlow was that he would install all of the gears. All was well. I did my break in and gear oil change and then wheeled it on a couple trips and brought it back to Allsouth to torque check everything and change the gear lube and check the R&P. The rear end R&P had a problem (larger than normal chunks of metal in the oil) and when pulled apart it appeared that surface on the drivers side where the race, bearing, cap sits was hosed. To Allsouth it appeared that this was probably how it was when I got it. So, on the phone with Steve Hudlow and I had Allsouth pull the rear end and I trailered to Hudlow (4 hr roundtrip). Hudlow checked the entire housing and concluded that the tubes were not true and since he didn't install the rear truss, he pointed the finger at Allsouth. Long story short, Hudlow ended up straightening out the rear end and then I had another 4 hr roundtrip to get the rear end. I also had to buy a new R&P (fortunately the ARB locker was fine). As a way to apologize for the hassle, Hudlow did surprise me by making a set of chromo rear 35 spline axle shafts. All in all, lots of hassle but all is good in the end. Although I will say that one of the things I was emphatic with Hudlow about is that I wanted everything changed and replaced with new (bearings / seals) and earlier this year I had a mystery sound in the front drivers side axle and Allsouth discovered the wheel bearing was junk. I had both fronts replaced. I have been running these axles for less than 2 years and I find it hard to believe the wheel bearings would have worn that fast, so I suspect they were never changed.
As noted, lesson learned for me is to single source this stuff.
Larry - this is probably not a problem you would ever have since you have the know how to do most/all of this yourself.
Topic: Ordered Pitbull Tires / thoughts on building a off road rig (Read 2305 times)
