As any of you who wheel a Dana 30 or 44 on bigger than 35’s probably know, the 1310 series steering u-joint in your axle has it limitations. If your running a quality Spicer 760x joint, the first thing that usually happens is the cap spins in the yoke, walks the half circle c-clip off, and your cap starts coming out until it hits a ball joint stud and self destructs.
That situation can be remedied by either clearancing your shafts to run full circle clips, or by welding your caps to the axle shaft. I’ve been doing that for a few years, and it will get you a long ways, but I was still pretty good at breaking them even with the caps welded in.
Once it’s impossible for the cap to come off, the next weak point is the needle rollers in the joint, under extreme load they quit rolling and start to fail, and once all your needle rollers are turned to dust the joint self destructs pretty quick after that.
Nowadays there are plenty of aftermarket solutions, CTM, OX, Nitro Gear, Longfield, and RCV to name a few, all of which are far out of my price range
Most of the aftermarket “super” joints run a bronze bushing instead of needle rollers, so that’s the direction I went.
I was able to find some oilite bushings with the right ID and OD to replace the needle rollers in a Spicer 760x
Gutted all the rollers out of the caps
I had an old joint I had previously robbed all the seals from, and I noticed you could get 0.1” more bronze in the cap without the seals, so I’m trying one sealed joint and one without seals
Installed in some junkyard shafts with caps welded in for good measure
Next week is Bronco Safari, so we will see how they hold up. Normally I get 2 days out of a stock 760x with welded caps, hopefully with bronze bushing it does a little better
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