What did you do TO your Gladiator today? [ADMIN WARNING: NO POLITICS, NO GUN TALK]

[Stan H]

I was on 1-10 in TX driving from Fl to SoCal in Jan 2025. I had to laugh because there were speed limit signs put up that were absolutely BLANK!!! Guess it was a choose your own adventure in that stretch.

I'd be doing 65- 70mph dont care how fast everyone else is driving .

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[Bandit’s Lair]

I'd be doing 65- 70mph dont care how fast everyone else is driving .

I think I was around that speed. I was in an older Pacifica crossover with over 200k on it and hadn’t been seriously driven for a few years so was taking it easy. If you can call a 2200 mile trip in 2 days easy.

 

[WILDHOBO]

Thanks for the reminder - time to order more of that marine type heat shrink. I use it for almost every connection in my Jeep and also use dielectric grease on all connectors.

I buy 3/8 and 5/16 heat shrink in 50’ spools. Just used some to cut and splice some power wires I wanted to pass through a hole. No need for a huge hole to pass the plugs.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I buy 3/8 and 5/16 heat shrink in 50’ spools. Just used some to cut and splice some power wires I wanted to pass through a hole. No need for a huge hole to pass the plugs.

You should see the rolls hanging in my garage - Compressor Controls was cleaning out excess inventory and things they no longer used so I got huge spools of about 4 different sizes. I have had those for decades but still need other sizes...... and they aren't marine type with the glue.

 

[WILDHOBO]

You should see the rolls hanging in my garage - Compressor Controls was cleaning out excess inventory and things they no longer used so I got huge spools of about 4 different sizes. I have had those for decades but still need other sizes...... and they aren't marine type with the glue.

That’s awesome. I have tons of it in shorty lengths. I buy it in large multi packs. And yes, always the adhesive filled stuff. I use the heat shrink solder connectors to make the connections, then cover them with more heat shrink, because I’m me.

 

[agoldxj]

You should see the rolls hanging in my garage - Compressor Controls was cleaning out excess inventory and things they no longer used so I got huge spools of about 4 different sizes. I have had those for decades but still need other sizes...... and they aren't marine type with the glue.

That’s awesome. I have tons of it in shorty lengths. I buy it in large multi packs. And yes, always the adhesive filled stuff. I use the heat shrink solder connectors to make the connections, then cover them with more heat shrink, because I’m me.

Man I’d like to be a fly on the wall for the wiring project if you guys meet up, the wealth of knowledge I’m sure I would learn a lot.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

That’s awesome. I have tons of it in shorty lengths. I buy it in large multi packs. And yes, always the adhesive filled stuff. I use the heat shrink solder connectors to make the connections, then cover them with more heat shrink, because I’m me.

LOL - sounds familiar.

 

[BlueScapegoat]

Gears done. Truss burned on.
Front pattern was really difficult to get acceptable. Rear ran an almost perfect pattern with the factory shims.

I've got more work to do before I throw them back under the jeep. Maybe next weekend.

Novel time.

Now that my help has left and I've gone back to my day job and had some time to think about some stuff, I wanted to hit on a couple other details and elaborate some on issues we had and overall thoughts on the regear process. I'm sure this is already documented all over the place but I like to put some of my thoughts into a post so I can reference it myself in the future and if it helps anybody else then that's just a positive. I like to type a lot and be verbose so it can come up easy in search results. I still come across my own posts on Toyota forums from 25 years ago.

This is the first time I've been hands on with a regear. I've pulled carriers and messed with shims a bit before, welded trusses, rebuilt axles, etc, but I've never gone through the whole process of a ratio change start to finish myself. I had two experienced people with me.

I have a Rubicon with the M210 front and M220 rear, like I believe all of our JTs do.
We were using Dana/Spicer 4.88 gears front and rear, going from 3.73. No carrier break on these axles, so in terms of parts all you need in theory are the gears and rebuild kits. (more on that)

One optional change we made was converting the rear axle pinion bearing from the ball bearing to roller bearing. I've seen discussion about this but we still had a bit of uncertainty going in, so here is a side by side photo of that rear pinion bearing so you can see the difference and how the race is constructed. I've seen talk that the ball bearings can be prone to failure, and at the very least, they're less proven. The fact that they only did a ball bearing in the rear pinion that sees drive all the time and not the front, leads me to believe that it wasn't a change for strength so much as a change for economy. So back to the roller bearing we went, as was the setup in previous generation D44s.

Another change we opted to make was the conversion from a crush sleeve on the pinions to a solid spacer. My experienced friend told me he'd seen people smack the pinion on rocks off road enough to compress the crush sleeve and loosen the pinion in the past, so that drove the decision to go to a solid spacer. You still set up to the same pinion torque to rotate with the solid spacer in theory, but you may really need to mess around with the shims a bit and crank down on the pinion nut to get there. In our case, well over 250 lb-ft on both axles for final setup. We ended up with one or two inch pounds more force than spec to rotate in the rear, but we theorize that's probably about right having gone from the ball bearing to the roller.

I ordered the conversion kits from East Coast Gear Supply, #D44JL-PBO-CONV and SS-D44JLF

Those parts showed up like this, with the roller itself loose in the box. Not particularly thrilled with that, but it allowed me to get the part numbers off the conversion bearing and buy another one to make a setup bearing anyway.

The specific part numbers for the rear pinion roller bearing conversion are Timken M802011 and Timken M802048, and are quite affordable on RockAuto. If you wanted to do the bearing conversion but not the solid sleeve conversion, you might want to have a stack of pinion shims on hand. See the earlier photo with the bearings side by side and the height difference.

Back to the rebuild kits. 10040478 for the rear, 10040469 for the front. These look like they come with a lot of shims, but they were very inadequate, at least for the front. The shims on each side of the carrier are different sizes, and they come in a not very useful range of thicknesses. I didn't write it down but it was something like some .003, .005, and .010 and nothing else. It wasn't enough for us to get it shimmed right and have a proper preload in the case. I hit up the local off road shop (shout out to Zeus) and in exchange for some Mountain Dew they gave me a stack of shims. These were all largely the same size we already had, I suspect because the good sizes are already on axles somewhere. They confirmed that the shims aren't always consistent in these rebuild kits and sometimes you get a shitty stack. So, we weren't too happy about that.

We messed with the front pattern for probably 12 hours, referenced multiple setup manuals, and contacted several professionals we knew in the space to get their input before we called it good enough. We wanted it perfect, but ultimately couldn't get it there and everybody we reached out to concurred that it was acceptable. If I were to do it over I'd spend the money on some more shims. And maybe some shim drivers.

We ended up getting it a smidge better than this but none of us thought to take any pictures.

Front, M210 4.88s:

I already mentioned it in a previous post but I'm going to put it in here again so it's in the same place. We dropped the rear in with the same factory shim stack and the pattern was really good, preload was good, backlash was good. After the front axle put up such a fight it was nice to not really have to do anything with the rear. Ultimately, the front end took two days of work and the rear took an hour.

Rear, M220 4.88s:

One more note on that, the Spicer rebuild kits don't come with marking compound, so you'll need that. They do come with some gasket, but the diff cover seals are reusable. We used that gasket on the pinion splines, but the splines are so tight on these pinions it might not even be necessary. An air hammer to get the pinions out was a lifesaver.

A pinion holding tool was really useful as well. We used this one, which also has a piece for using it to press the pinion out if you'd rather.

We used a Vevor bearing puller as well, though not strictly necessary if you're willing to just cut the bearings off.
Same story with a case spreader. These aren't usually necessary either but with the shitty shim stack selection in the front it came in clutch to get the offset decent and still have a tight fit in the housing.
A shop press is a must have, we used it for both pressing on new bearings and for holding the carrier to tighten the ring gear bolts. I just have a little 12 ton press from Harbor Freight.

Everything else was pretty standard for a regear. I had gotten some seal drivers that were supposed to work on these axles but they didn't fit. The construction of the pinion seals allowed us to just hammer them in with a block of wood anyway, they put up no fight. I had also gotten a race driver set and we ended up just using a punch to drive them in, it was easier to feel what it was doing and see that it was going in straight, imo. Tons of options for a good punch but this was a great length with an oval end and worked beautifully.

We used a propane torch ($30 at Harbor Freight) and an infrared thermometer to get the whole front axle up to about 300-350° for welding the truss on, and wrapped in a welding blanket afterward. My little Hobart 190 (230v) did just fine. The welds aren't super pretty on the front of the axle but they burned in real nice on the rear (go figure.) Truss is from Artec

Pressed out the upper bushings on the front axle and will be installing Johnny Joints in their place. I did the same on my TJ back in the day, it really helps to tighten up the front end, imo. Gets rids of that last little bit of reverb feeling. Every other joint on the front is already a JJ.

I still have some lower control arm mount skids to weld on, then get some paint on there and throw them back under the Jeep.

I think that's about everything.

Does anybody have any recommendations for anything else I should do while I have the convenience of having the axles out?

 

[BlueScapegoat]

I paid someone to help me do my first one when my front failed in 25. Great experience. I’d do it again. But next time I’d pull the axle like you did. On the floor was tough. I highly recommend Revolution. Such great parts, and master install kit. I even bought their gear puller. So nice.

Maybe worth noting that the local off road shop told me they recently made the switch from recommending and installing Dana/Spicer to Revolution.

 

[Stan H]

Now that my help has left and I've gone back to my day job and had some time to think about some stuff, I wanted to hit on a couple other details and elaborate some on issues we had and overall thoughts on the regear process. I'm sure this is already documented all over the place but I like to put some of my thoughts into a post so I can reference it myself in the future and if it helps anybody else then that's just a positive.

This is the first time I've been hands on with a regear. I've pulled carriers and messed with shims a bit before, welded trusses, rebuilt axles, etc, but I've never gone through the whole process of a ratio change start to finish myself. I had two experienced people with me.

I have a Rubicon with the M210 front and M220 rear, like I believe all of our JTs do.
We were using Dana/Spicer 4.88 gears front and rear, going from 3.73. No carrier break on these axles, so in terms of parts all you need in theory are the gears and rebuild kits. (more on that)

One optional change we made was converting the rear axle pinion bearing from the ball bearing to roller bearing. I've seen discussion about this but we still had a bit of uncertainty going in, so here is a side by side photo of that rear pinion bearing so you can see the difference and how the race is constructed. I've seen talk that the ball bearings can be prone to failure, and at the very least, they're less proven. The fact that they only did a ball bearing in the rear pinion that sees drive all the time and not the front, leads me to believe that it wasn't a change for strength so much as a change for economy. So back to the roller bearing we went, as was the setup in previous generation D44s.

Another change we opted to make was the conversion from a crush sleeve on the pinions to a solid spacer. My experienced friend told me he'd seen people smack the pinion on rocks off road enough to compress the crush sleeve and loosen the pinion in the past, so that drove the decision to go to a solid spacer. You still set up to the same pinion torque to rotate, but you may really need to mess around with the shims a bit and crank down on the pinion nut to get there. In our case, well over 250 lb-ft on both axles for final setup.

I ordered the conversion kits from East Coast Gear Supply, #D44JL-PBO-CONV and SS-D44JLF

Those parts showed up like this, with the roller itself loose in the box. Not particularly thrilled with that, but it allowed me to get the part numbers off the conversion bearing and buy another one to make a setup bearing anyway.

The specific part numbers for the rear pinion roller bearing conversion are Timken M802011 and Timken M802048, and are quite affordable on RockAuto.

Back to the rebuild kits. 10040478 for the rear, 10040469 for the front. These look like they come with a lot of shims, but they were very inadequate, at least for the front. The shims on each side of the carrier are different sizes, and they come in a not very useful range of thicknesses. I didn't write it down but it was something like some .003, .005, and .010 and nothing else. It wasn't enough for us to get it shimmed right and have a proper preload in the case. I hit up the local off road shop (shout out to Zeus) and in exchange for some Mountain Dew they gave me a stack of shims. These were all largely the same size we already had, I suspect because the good sizes are already on axles somewhere. They confirmed that the shims aren't always consistent in these rebuild kits and sometimes you get a shitty stack. So, we weren't too happy about that. We messed with the front pattern for probably 12 hours, referenced multiple setup manuals, and contacted several professionals we knew in the space to get their input before we called it good enough. We wanted it perfect, but ultimately couldn't get it there and everybody we reached out to concurred that it was acceptable.

We ended up getting it a smidge better than this but none of us thought to take any pictures.

Front, M210 4.88s:

I already mentioned it in a previous post but I'm going to put it in here again so it's in the same place. We dropped the rear in with the same factory shim stack and the pattern was really good, preload was good, backlash was good. After the front axle put up such a fight it was nice to not really have to do anything with the rear. It was literally an hour job all said and done.

Rear, M220 4.88s:

One more note on that, the Spicer rebuild kits don't come with marking compound, so you'll need that. They do come with some gasket, but the diff cover seals are reusable. We used that gasket on the pinion splines, but the splines are so tight on these pinions it might not even be necessary. An air hammer to get the pinions out was a lifesaver.

A pinion holding tool was really useful as well. We used this one, which also has a piece for using it to press the pinion out if you'd rather.

We used a Vevor bearing puller as well, though not strictly necessary if you're willing to just cut the bearings off.
Same story with a case spreader. These aren't usually necessary either but with the shitty shim stack selection in the front it came in clutch to get the offset decent and still have a tight fit in the housing.
A shop press is a must have, we used it for both pressing on new bearings and for holding the carrier to tighten the ring gear bolts. I just have a little 12 ton press from Harbor Freight.

Everything else was pretty standard for a regear. I had gotten some seal drivers that were supposed to work on these axles but they didn't fit. The construction of the pinion seals allowed us to just hammer them in with a block of wood anyway, they put up no fight. I had also gotten a race driver set and we ended up just using a punch to drive them in, it was easier to feel what it was doing and see that it was going in straight, imo.

We used a propane torch ($30 at Harbor Freight) and an infrared thermometer to get the whole front axle up to about 300-350° for welding the truss on, and wrapped in a welding blanket afterward. My little Hobart 190 (230v) did just fine. The welds aren't super pretty on the front of the axle but they burned in real nice on the rear (go figure.) Truss is from Artec

Pressed out the upper bushings on the front axle and will be installing Johnny Joints in their place. I did the same on my TJ back in the day, it really helps to tighten up the front end, imo. Gets rids of that last little bit of reverb feeling. Every other joint on the front is already a JJ.

I still have some lower control arm mount skids to weld on, then get some paint on there and throw them back under the Jeep.

I think that's about everything.

Does anybody have any recommendations for anything else I should do while I have the convenience of having the axles out?

I saved this post thanks

 

[WILDHOBO]

Man I’d like to be a fly on the wall for the wiring project if you guys meet up, the wealth of knowledge I’m sure I would learn a lot.

I don’t know shit in comparison to Bill. I’m just happy to be his hands and have him tell me how he wants it. He bought his first heat shrink before I knew what it even was.

 

[Joosed]

Added a tonneau cover and a dead pedal.

 

[Mojave20]

Clearanced the M.O.R.E. engine skid more at the crossover pipe. Had to clearance originally during initial install but always had a rattle when I’d hit large bumps.

 

[Gatorized]

Novel time.

Now that my help has left and I've gone back to my day job and had some time to think about some stuff, I wanted to hit on a couple other details and elaborate some on issues we had and overall thoughts on the regear process. I'm sure this is already documented all over the place but I like to put some of my thoughts into a post so I can reference it myself in the future and if it helps anybody else then that's just a positive. I like to type a lot and be verbose so it can come up easy in search results. I still come across my own posts on Toyota forums from 25 years ago.

This is the first time I've been hands on with a regear. I've pulled carriers and messed with shims a bit before, welded trusses, rebuilt axles, etc, but I've never gone through the whole process of a ratio change start to finish myself. I had two experienced people with me.

I have a Rubicon with the M210 front and M220 rear, like I believe all of our JTs do.
We were using Dana/Spicer 4.88 gears front and rear, going from 3.73. No carrier break on these axles, so in terms of parts all you need in theory are the gears and rebuild kits. (more on that)

One optional change we made was converting the rear axle pinion bearing from the ball bearing to roller bearing. I've seen discussion about this but we still had a bit of uncertainty going in, so here is a side by side photo of that rear pinion bearing so you can see the difference and how the race is constructed. I've seen talk that the ball bearings can be prone to failure, and at the very least, they're less proven. The fact that they only did a ball bearing in the rear pinion that sees drive all the time and not the front, leads me to believe that it wasn't a change for strength so much as a change for economy. So back to the roller bearing we went, as was the setup in previous generation D44s.


Another change we opted to make was the conversion from a crush sleeve on the pinions to a solid spacer. My experienced friend told me he'd seen people smack the pinion on rocks off road enough to compress the crush sleeve and loosen the pinion in the past, so that drove the decision to go to a solid spacer. You still set up to the same pinion torque to rotate with the solid spacer in theory, but you may really need to mess around with the shims a bit and crank down on the pinion nut to get there. In our case, well over 250 lb-ft on both axles for final setup. We ended up with one or two inch pounds more force than spec to rotate in the rear, but we theorize that's probably about right having gone from the ball bearing to the roller.

I ordered the conversion kits from East Coast Gear Supply, #D44JL-PBO-CONV and SS-D44JLF

Those parts showed up like this, with the roller itself loose in the box. Not particularly thrilled with that, but it allowed me to get the part numbers off the conversion bearing and buy another one to make a setup bearing anyway.



The specific part numbers for the rear pinion roller bearing conversion are Timken M802011 and Timken M802048, and are quite affordable on RockAuto. If you wanted to do the bearing conversion but not the solid sleeve conversion, you might want to have a stack of pinion shims on hand. See the earlier photo with the bearings side by side and the height difference.

Back to the rebuild kits. 10040478 for the rear, 10040469 for the front. These look like they come with a lot of shims, but they were very inadequate, at least for the front. The shims on each side of the carrier are different sizes, and they come in a not very useful range of thicknesses. I didn't write it down but it was something like some .003, .005, and .010 and nothing else. It wasn't enough for us to get it shimmed right and have a proper preload in the case. I hit up the local off road shop (shout out to Zeus) and in exchange for some Mountain Dew they gave me a stack of shims. These were all largely the same size we already had, I suspect because the good sizes are already on axles somewhere. They confirmed that the shims aren't always consistent in these rebuild kits and sometimes you get a shitty stack. So, we weren't too happy about that.

We messed with the front pattern for probably 12 hours, referenced multiple setup manuals, and contacted several professionals we knew in the space to get their input before we called it good enough. We wanted it perfect, but ultimately couldn't get it there and everybody we reached out to concurred that it was acceptable. If I were to do it over I'd spend the money on some more shims. And maybe some shim drivers.

We ended up getting it a smidge better than this but none of us thought to take any pictures.

Front, M210 4.88s:

I already mentioned it in a previous post but I'm going to put it in here again so it's in the same place. We dropped the rear in with the same factory shim stack and the pattern was really good, preload was good, backlash was good. After the front axle put up such a fight it was nice to not really have to do anything with the rear. Ultimately, the front end took two days of work and the rear took an hour.

Rear, M220 4.88s:



One more note on that, the Spicer rebuild kits don't come with marking compound, so you'll need that. They do come with some gasket, but the diff cover seals are reusable. We used that gasket on the pinion splines, but the splines are so tight on these pinions it might not even be necessary. An air hammer to get the pinions out was a lifesaver.

A pinion holding tool was really useful as well. We used this one, which also has a piece for using it to press the pinion out if you'd rather.



We used a Vevor bearing puller as well, though not strictly necessary if you're willing to just cut the bearings off.
Same story with a case spreader. These aren't usually necessary either but with the shitty shim stack selection in the front it came in clutch to get the offset decent and still have a tight fit in the housing.
A shop press is a must have, we used it for both pressing on new bearings and for holding the carrier to tighten the ring gear bolts. I just have a little 12 ton press from Harbor Freight.

Everything else was pretty standard for a regear. I had gotten some seal drivers that were supposed to work on these axles but they didn't fit. The construction of the pinion seals allowed us to just hammer them in with a block of wood anyway, they put up no fight. I had also gotten a race driver set and we ended up just using a punch to drive them in, it was easier to feel what it was doing and see that it was going in straight, imo. Tons of options for a good punch but this was a great length with an oval end and worked beautifully.

We used a propane torch ($30 at Harbor Freight) and an infrared thermometer to get the whole front axle up to about 300-350° for welding the truss on, and wrapped in a welding blanket afterward. My little Hobart 190 (230v) did just fine. The welds aren't super pretty on the front of the axle but they burned in real nice on the rear (go figure.) Truss is from Artec




Pressed out the upper bushings on the front axle and will be installing Johnny Joints in their place. I did the same on my TJ back in the day, it really helps to tighten up the front end, imo. Gets rids of that last little bit of reverb feeling. Every other joint on the front is already a JJ.




I still have some lower control arm mount skids to weld on, then get some paint on there and throw them back under the Jeep.




I think that's about everything.

Does anybody have any recommendations for anything else I should do while I have the convenience of having the axles out?

Did you pot the locker sensor?

 

[BlueScapegoat]

Did you pot the locker sensor?

No, and I have in my notes that there's a locker sensor issue to figure out before it goes back in. Thanks for the reminder

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