Jeep Rear End

To defend my "junk" label, I have built custom Jeeps since 1998 when the TJ first arrived. I have seen dana 35 axles eat the spider gears with stock tires after 70K miles of street with frequent oil changes, their main weakness is that the carrier housing ovals out around the spider gear shaft causing lot of slop between shaft and carrier housing. When this happens and you accelerate i can easily snap the shaft and cause a catastrophic failure. Given the big bock power of the beastly 2.5 L engine, I would have to say failures under 100K miles clearly point to "junk" .

Dana didnt used to make junk but in later years, unfortunately, they did, the D35 being a prime example. I do understand that there are high mileage examples still working but there are also probably Yugos still on the road as well.

On the other hand, over 10 years of beating on a 4.88 geared locked 8.8 ford in the back of a TJ with 300+HP 5.2 Magnum and 37" tires resulted in nothing but oil changes says something too, they work!

A 8 1/4" will work as well but the 8.8 is less than 1/2 price of the disk brake conversion for the 8 1/4 and stronger. Just my $.02