What is considered to be enough HP to bend the Dana 60 ? Is this equally true for narrowed rears with the ladder bar brackets welded to the center section? Hard for me to imagine bending this rear with the short and heavy wall truck tubes.
Mark
Your heavy walls tubes are a help... but the distance from the ladder bar or 4 link mounts to the end is the important part.. thats the reason I back brace right out to the outer bearings
A DANA CAN BE BACK BRACED TOO, all the way to the bearing. Why is this so hard to get into someones mind. Build the ramps to the center, or to the ladder-4-link braces,which is better because you can get more of an angle, or distance from back of housing,then a link(like a 4-link bar with adjusters) then you can put preload into your BACK BRACE. Lets see you bend that. It's called triangulation, same as with your cage. Just use the same engineering with the dana and all the weakness junk goes out the window. On another note when that pinion tries to climb the ring gear in a 9, how much does that center section, which is just bolted to the flat side of the housing, bend and flex that said housing? Won't see this on a dana. This not a mopar thing but the ford rear is not the answer to all rears just the fad at the moment till something else comes along.
Is if the pinion climbs the ring gear and flexs the housing face like you state, the ring gear will move with the pinion as it is in the third member. Just the housing would flex not the pinion. Now in a Dana 60 when this happens you move the pinion further away from ring gear. Not a good thing.
Read what i said again, the housing will flex, didn't say anything about the pinion flexing. In our Race car applications do you think a pinion will flex in that 9 inch carrier or dana housing?
Well since a nine inch pinion is supported in two locations and the Dana only one which leaves a longer unsupported pinion you tell me.
Lets push a little farther, is it the pinion or the bearing letting it deflect. The reason precision milling machines and lathes use a tapered bronze bushing, can't have that movement. Back in the late 60s early 70S Chrysler did some testing on the dana(slow motion photography) and found the pinion actually moved into the pinion not away on the stick cars so they recommended more back lash.
Ok so it's the bearing on the 60. It still does matter as the nine inch has two bearings to spread the loads and handle this deflection. Now you can run the proper back lash and not worry.
It's the bearing on both rears, that pinion will not bend, it will brake first. I personally have never broke a dana, my buddy's car spit a tooth out the cover,then latter shattered a Strange axle and took out the sprag, after 6 years of racing that car two times a week, never bent the housing either. When i bought my 64 plm it had a 8 3/4,lasted 4 sundays, took all the teeth off the ring gear. I had a truck housing,reused the axles and 8 3/4 ends. spool and gears cost $200, used same bearings and 1350 yoke that came in the dana,did buy a new seal,tig welded the ends and ladder brackets. That was in 93 parked the car in 99 for a total rebuild and drive my other car. Might check it before it goes back together.
