[suburbangeorge]

Way back when(1990?) I wanted disk brakes on my '66 4wd Suburban. Like everyone here I figured I'd get a front axle from a Blazer. One I got had a 3.73 tag on it but it was actually a 3.08. What to do? Called Dana and the engineer that I talked to said that you could not swap the Blazer open knuckle parts onto the earlier Suburban closed knuckle axle. Had access to shop manuals to both trucks and the more that I looked at the cut away details for the different axles, the more I said "why not?". So I did it. Everything from the steering knuckle and U joint out from the donor bolts to your original axle. U joint is the same on both axles except the closed knuckle joint does not have grease seals. This allows gear lube to lubricate the U joint. If you have joints with the seals just remove them. The only other difference is that the drum brake backing plate and the disk brake caliper carrier are drilled differently. Same 6 bolt pattern but one is drilled 12 and 6 o-clock and the other at 3 and 9. If you just bolt it up the caliper will be in the wrong location and the brake hoses won't be the correct length. Went to a machine shop and had the caliper brackets re-drilled to backing plate pattern. Doing it this way avoids making the minor changes needed to mount the later axle in an earlier truck. Turning circle is a little wider but your u joints are protected and always lubricated. I think Toyota solid axles are still closed knuckle as are Land Rover. Called the guy at Dana back and he hemmed and hawed and finally said that he'd never done it but friends who had did it just the same way that I had done. He couldn't tell me how to modify his company's axles. Liability issues you know.