The Lone Ranger – 60/14 Bolt swap – 14 Bolt Swap

I’ve been complaining about the limited slip long enough, now its time to do something about it! When looking at options to lock up the Dana 60u I had under the truck, there wasn’t anything cheap out there (besides welding it, and I don’t really want a spool). It came down to either drop a grand an go 35 spine in the rear, or drop a grand and go 30 spline. Obviously 35 spline would have been the way to do it right, but that’s expensive!

So I went the cheaper route and grabbed a pig to stick in the rear, 4:10 open SRW out of a 1987 suburban:

Thankfully everything looked awesome in here which was a nice change of pace from the other rear axles I’ve bought in the past.

Now that I had the axle in hand, I dumped some money over at Ruff stuff and Complete offroad:

I went with the Yukon locker hoping it would live a little longer than the Detroit, not that I think I’ll be popping axles on a regular enough basis that I think it’ll be a problem. The locker install is stupid easy, and the ‘adjusting collars’ in the 14 bolt is slick too!

I then moved on to getting rid of those drums, which turned out to be quite nice inside (new shoes, and hardware in there). I did the typical 14 bolt disc brake swap using parts from a ’77 Chevy K20 for the rotors, pads, calipers, and brake lines. The brackets themselves are from Ruff Stuff. It’s a pretty straight forward process, you take these:

Place them on the floor and beat the studs out:

Clean up the mating areas, slap the studs back in with your new rotor, mount everything up correctly and you’ll get something that looks like this:

I opted for a bit of armor when doing this swap, and picked up Ruff Stuffs diff cover (which I added a drain plug guard):

I also added a pinion guard, which rounded out the package:

Then out comes the D60u:

And in goes the 14 bolt:

Yeah, I lost some ground clearance there, but I’m sure it’ll self-clearance just fine over time.

I did drive it around some tonight and it feels a bit different. I’ve run spools in the rear of my other vehicles so this was different having a locker back there. Being able to adjust how much you turn (on long swooping turns) by throttle application is different, and it make you pay attention a bit more as well. I’m sure that the rear tires being a little different in diameter isn’t helping things out at all. It’s worth it to have the rear locked up.

As it sits right now, I need to extend my drive shaft some, and possibly grind on that lip some to give me a little more ground clearance. Otherwise, its time to wheel!