Youze guys stop by with your knowledged ORV facts and junk and blow my “order of magnificence” out of the water completely.
To answer the questions: Buddy still has a Dana 35 in the back (the hitch is an after market job). My “Jeep Guy” and I have discussed swapping out to a Dana 44 in the not too distant future, but I was hoping to put it off a bit longer as my 35 is just fine. Though after doing some research due to the comments I noticed that 35’s w/ABS in my year are all C-clipped, so yeah, it’ll have to go.
Jeep Guy says $500 + labor.
Two spares will be a minimum on my ORV rig. One on the roof and one on a rear tire carrying bumper I’ll be buying from these guys (for those who missed out last Buddy post, I’m also getting this front bumper w/a 2in receiver and these rock rails from them). One of the guys at work does some very serious structural fab work on custom hot rods in his off hours and we’ll be getting together sooner than later to built a cross between a roof rack and an exo-skeleton kindathing mounting to the rails and the front and back bumpers.
Said rack will carry hi-lift jack, shovel and/or Pulaski, six jerry cans and four spares, with the previously mentioned one on the back and plans for a sixth spare to be mounted on the front bumper via the front receiver mount. I don’t plan on using the rack as an exo-skeleton, but since Buddy didn’t come with a factory roof rack, and the rain rails won’t hold that much weight, I have to go with that style rack.
For winching, I’m going to go with one 10,000lb winch, not sure what brand yet, in a 2in post cradle with pre-wired connections, front and back.
Then maybe I’ll finally be ready for 31’s?
C-Clips? Get rid of them with the C-Clip eliminator kit from Strange Engineering (and a hacksaw). Much less than $500.