Axle upgrades for heavy tire
 

I've searched for what feels like hours...so here's my question.

stock rubi 4 door
will do a lift and 35s
will do 5.13, axle sleeves, gussets

For those who run a heavy tire, like a nitto trail or toyo in 35 that weighs about 80lb, what axle upgrades have you done? sleeves and gussets?

Definitely gussets, sleeves depend how hard and often you wheel it. With 5:13's you'd eventually want chromo shafts. Besides that 35's do pretty well on the stock axles (especially d44 front & rear)

I run the 35" Toyos. They are about 115 pounds when mounted so its a significant increar over the 80 pound stock wheels and tires. I have a Rubi and currently run gussets and sleeves. No chromo shafts just yet but will upgrade before I "have to".

I wish I skipped the inner sleeves and did something outer instead. Because of the sleeves, I am limited in shaft upgrades if I ever want to go crazy like RCV's. Trying to move u to a bigger spline count to work with ARB lockers is not doable anymore so I'm stuck with the factory e-locker if I ever go RCV.

Gusstes are a must...and I'd look at outer sleeved or a truss if you plan on heavy wheeling. The chromo shafts are a good idea but I think grabbing some extra U joints would be a sufficient purchase. The u joint will probably fail before the shaft bends/breaks.

I run that setup, 35's KM2, 5.13's gussets, nitro sleeves, control arm skids, and a dana 30 open diff up front...so far I've had to replace a wheel hub bearing and I know my U joints are already sticking. Here is a short video of what dana 30s could do with light wheeling...will eventually upgrade the axle once its time.

Jeep JK Wrangler Unlimited Texas - YouTube

KM2's aren't exactly a heavy tire. In fact, your setup with 15" rims puts their weight at maybe 5 pounds more then stock Rubi tires on 17's or stock Sahara tires on 18's. The Toyos and Nittos are a load range E tire and are one of the heaviest tires you can get outside of competition tires. As I mentioned, mine weigh 115 pounds on 16's. That is probably 30 pounds heavier per tire over the KM2 on a 15" steel wheel.

The 35 sp RCV shafts required with the Rubi replacement ARB are only the 1.5" 35 diameter for about the 1st 5" of the shaft so you're not really getting much, if any, increase in strength going from 30 sp RCVs to 35 sp RCVs.

There are currently 2 new lockers being developed that will be bolt-in replacements for the Rubi locker. Neither will require 35 sp shafts.

That's great to hear about the new locker options. However, even though I have gussets installed, my outer C's are slightly bent so I'm just waiting for my overpriced e locker to fail so I can upgrade everything. That means you get a call from me about a PR44!

I have inner sleeves and RCV's ah I see you have ARB though!!!
I'd do rear axles right away

What I was saying is I can't go to a bigger spline count shaft which is needed to run with ARB locker if I ever upgrade to rcv. I'm stuck with the factory spline that works with my e locker. If I hadn't done inner sleeves, my housing could accept a slightly thicker axle but now it can't.

I can still get rcv that will work with my rubi d44. It will just be the stock spline. But, as dynatrac pointed out, it's not that much stronger.

I'm just waiting for my e locker to crap out then i am looking at full axle replacement.

Yeah I'm running stock elocker but RCV and Reid outters and prosteers sleeved and guesseted