Off-Road.com BBS: From M151 to M151-LC the Axels!

To get the proper performance required to make the 1962 M151-LC a real desert Racer, certain new editions had to be used and modified.

Here are the two axles Dana 35 and Dana 30 that will be mounted under the uni-body.

Do to the wimpyness of the Dana axels in stock form we will be pulling the guts and milling all new internal parts in our shop as soon as we complete the axel case redesign for centering.

The newesr stronger gears and shafts will then be reinstalled into the axel case housing.

The axles housing body will need to be modified so that both the pumpkins are centered, not slightly off center.

This is do to the uni-body design, the M151 tranny was centered, the Jeep Wrangler type axels are off center, so to make the tranny work everything has to be centered as well as balaced down to the use of a Mic in our case.

So we will have to cut the front axel shell and internal parts and mill and reweld them to work from the m151 uni-body design.

On a Jeep Wrangler the rear axel is already centered so it will not have to be modified just rebuilt with stronger precision parts.

Thank Goodness as the cost to do these projects can get steep if we have to send something out to a shop!

This simple mod also gives us more play with a suspension lift as well.

We shall cut the leaf plate mounts off the bottom of the axels and reweld them on the top giving us about 4 additional inches of suspension lift.

We must work out the weight difference between the front of the mutt and the rear, placing some ballast along the unibody and the rear of the vehicle to balance eveything out, this gives us better jump radius.

The weld lift support and the anchor braces shall do the rest, keeping vibration to a minimal, and allowing us smoother landings during air jumps.

Here are a few pictures

The too rough axels that have not been painted yet are the Dana front and rear axels, the third axels is our spare axels which we are finished painting and will be built this week.

Here are some of the new parts for the spare axel.

Here are a set of the rear fender A2 lifting/tow loops sanded primed and painted and ready to be installed.

Nate got these ready last night.