A Dana or any rear under a small tire radial car will be fairly long. The leaf pads or even the ladder bar bracket will also be spaced out pretty far. Outside of these points is where a hard leaving radial car WILL bend the tubes. So the "brace" described above will also be pretty long, not have enough angle to be much support and will also need some type bracket welded onto the center case itself. These "forces" pushing on the center case are definitely not ideal, plus it will take a serious piece of chromoly tubing not to flex in this same application. So that leaves you with building some type of "truss", which gets heavy quick. This is not speculation on my part, but spoken from experience, as I have tried to "fix" this issue on some small tire cars with Danas. So as good as a Dana can be, this is just one of the applications where there are MUCH better choices.
Radial cars bend or break EVERYTHING. We had a very well braced sheetmetal housing under our car at one time, but it was mild steel. We bent it several times, when the car was 60 footing in the high teens. We had to upgrade to a moly housing with .250 wall moly tubes and some serious backbracing to fix it. Basically a Pro-Mod housing is what we built. You just can't properly brace a Dana axle tube to stop this without adding a LOT of weight and in my own attempts, even that doesn't work.
Some think I am always "hating" on Danas and 727s, because I suggest other options to many. That is FAR from the truth. I just happen to think there are better choices than those for certain applications. Now personally, I would NOT put a Dana in any car I owned, but that is personal preference and has no bearing on how good of a rear I think it is. For most on this board, it is a fine choice and you likely won't de disappointed with your choice.
