7 1/4 as bad as they say

The original rear in my cuda was a 7.25. I built the \6 with more compression, a cam, 4bbl, headers and dual exhaust. I drove it that way for about 20K miles and did not hesitate burn rubber and it held up fine. I did swap in an 8.25 in preparation for a hot 360 but if I hadn't gotten the 8.25 for free I would have waited for the 7.25 to break before swapping it out.

I was given a 73 Dart by a co-worker that he purchased new, it had a 318 and a 7.25. This car had over 300,000 miles on it when I got it and still had the original 7.25 and according the the co-worker he never had any axle problems.

Mopar continued to use the 7.25 in the last years of the rear wheel drive cars and 2wd 4cyl/v6 Dakotas through 96. If it was such a poor design it wouldn't have had such a long run. Any axle will break if you exceed it's design limits and the 7.25 is certainly not a performance axle but it's fine in \6 and 318 applications that are not pushing major power increases over stock.