[Mike C]

69-91 will swap in. But 69 is closed knuckle and 70 is open knuckle but still drum brake. Somewhere around ‘79 the Dana 44 turned into an 8.5” 10 bolt, but either will work and are mostly equivalent in strength. Rumor is 88-91 have 30 spline inner axles same as Dana 44 but I can’t verify.

I swapped ‘86 10 bolt hubs and 8 lug brakes onto my original ‘72 Dana 44 housing and knuckles. On my kids Jimmy we swapped in a complete 8.5” 10 bolt. We also used a ‘79 TransAm limited slip in the front.

One interesting thing I found was the ‘86 Suburban outer stubs had two grooves for snap rings so either manual or auto hubs could be used. On the ‘84 in my kids truck, outers had only 1 groove so his original blue knobs wouldn’t work and we swapped in the ‘86 axles since I reused my Dana 44 axles when doing the hub/brake conversion.