that's what I did after trying to answer this same question. I sold my front housing and entire rear and replaced with the pr44 unlimited and a Currie d60 rear. My bud did D60 front and rear and sold his rubi axles. in the end I was about 3k less than him on axles alone. he had to buy new wheels, so I bought his beadlocks cheap

I will run 40's on this and don't expect problems. 37's easy peasy

 

Your paying $400 for front c gussets?

 

For 37's:

Truss or sleeve the front tubes.
Cromo shafts or maybe RCV's
Gusset the c's
Rear cromo shafts
5.13's
Call it good

I have a friend who wheels his beadlocked 37's HARD....on a built Dana 30. Yes, he's planning to do a Dana 60 swap with a 14 bolt in the rear....but he's wheeled 37's on that Dana 30 for three years, and has only had one breakage - he had a bad batch of bolts and the ring gear broke free of the carrier. All of the bolts sheared simultaneously!

That breakage can be chalked up to "freak occurence", so I think that we can say that your 44's will handle 37's as long as you ensure that they're mildly built.

 

Thank you all for you help with my decision! Seems like everyone is on the same page with building up the 44's and leaving the 60's alone. Im not doing extreme comp wheeling so I'll save a little money on building the 44's. Thanks again for all your help

 

Just beef up your D44's. Gusset and sleeve the front. Get RCV axles but you will not need the 35 spline. Get some chromos for the rear and you'll be set!

 

I was looking at the same thing over the last couple weeks. I was either doing 37s with axle gussets and sleeves on the front and a regear to 4.88 or run 35s for now. I ended up ordering 35s so I can save some cash to do everything in the future. I was going to spend a little under $2k to regear both axles and gusset/sleeve the front axle.

 

This is my DD and I've got 37s with 5.38s and it runs great on/off hwy etc. No sleeves, gussets yet though so I don't play too hard off road yet.

 

Good to hear! My BIL lives about 10min from there and I plan on hitting the falls during the coming holidays.

 

We're running 42's on OEM 44's that are beefed up.... RCV's, Gussets, Sleeves, Rear Chromoly Shafts with no issues.

 

Do the RCV still use axle seals with that boot?