In spite of all that I have said in the past regarding factory front axle housings and that there is no need to sleeve them, I'm here to formerly state that I WAS WRONG and if you wheel your Jeep hard, I would highly recommend that you get a set installed. If you cannot afford to have a set of sleeves installed, be sure to check your front axle housing on a regular basis near to where your passenger side control arms are mounted as that is where ALL the breaks have been occuring. Please note that these breaks have been happening on both Dana 44 and Dana 30 housings and REGARDLESS of what tire size you run including stock. While there are tens of thousands of JK's out there and to the best of my knowledge, only about a dozen breaks that have been recorded, I can now say that I have personally witnessed 2 of them happen to the same guy over the last 3 years and have even seen 2 breaks happen on one run. Clearly, time and experience has proven that the factory JK front axle housings either have a design flaw or are made out of cheap brittle steel. Here are a couple of pics of what the axle housing breaks look like...





Again, please take the time to carefully inspect your front axle housing on a regular basis and, if you wheel your Jeep hard, do yourself a favor and have a set of sleeves like the kind that Off Road Evolution makes installed as soon as you can afford it. Heck, if you can afford it, I would recommend that you just upgrade to a ProRock 44. If you have a Rubicon, all you need is the housing as everything else from your factory axle can be swapped into it.

 

all I can say is WOW!
I think sleeves are now in my future

 

WOW..thats a scary pic.. Thanks for the info..

 

Honestly, I simply have not seen any JK axle tubes bending - ONLY breaking. As mentioned, two people on our recent Rubicon run broke their axle housing. The first one happend to Trail Bud while driving down an easy section of trail near Rubicon Springs and I just found out about the other break happening to blazer4949 as he was on his way home on the 395. There were no impact marks on the tubes or any other signs of stress and it would seem that they might be caused by fatigue/metallurgy.

 

i inspect my housing all the time. do you think it is catastrophic or are there warning signs?

 

From what I have seen, the breaks are not catastrophic. As mentioned, in the case of blazer4949, his axle housing didn't break until his was almost 100 miles south of Tahoe and on the highway. Trail Bud was going down an easy section of trail and found that his steering was getting difficult. Eventually, he found that he couldn't steer at all. Based on this, I have to assume that the breaks occured slowly - maybe they were more of a tear and if that is the case, you should be able to see some kind of tell tale sign ahead of time. I would look for any signs of fatigue or cracks developing in the area pointed out.

 

I took some preventative measures...

Hope they get them replaced soon

 

Damn. The passenger side axle/frame meeting point has got to be the most-stressed part of the JK. That's the point where death wobble originates when track bars aren't torqued or go bad. Now we learn it's where axle housing breaks occur. Honestly, it seems like Chrysler expects that sector of the chassis to do way too much work.

 

You ain't kidding. If you think about it, the point where the break occurs is the same point where the upper and lower control arm mounts are welded on as well as the track bar and steering stabilzer mounts. If the stress from the control arms and track bar aren't enough to tear at that point, I have to wonder if maybe all the welding that is done in that area somehow changes the properties of the steel.

 

If I took a piece of pipe with the inner diameter the same as the outer diameter of the axle housing, could I cut in half lengthwise and weld the 2 halves to the axle in that spot to strengthen it? Or is there a better solution?