Gone to talk to a man about a….

Horsepower transfer assembly.

Wouldn’t you know it, I start talking to Bill Quick about grabbing up a Cherokee like Buddy the Jeep as a BOV and I go and break parts off Buddy’s axleshaft. Nothing major. I can still get to and fro with no extra drama, but this means I had to switch around “the order of things” a little bit in relation to upgrades.

And since I’m being monetarily inconvenienced, I’m fixing it better than factory.

As a 93 Cherokee, Buddy came from the factory with a Dana/Spicer 35 rear axle. If you like C-clips and too few splines to match the rest of the vehicles capabilities, a Dana 35 will do you just fine. I do not. And so, for the past couple mornings I’ve been scouring the horizon for a replacement Dana 44 axle.

This is an excellent primer as to why. The rest of his Cherokee tales are pretty good too.

Tis a rare beast in the width I need. You can either pay someone $1500 for a found and rebuilt one, probably with some sort of locked/lockable differential. Or, if you lack that kind of swag (like me), you can hit up bone yard after bone yard trying to not sound too desperate on the phone.

I’m essentially looking for an 1987, 88 or 89 Cherokee or Wagoneer with a factory tow package that still has the axle attached. Not exactly an easy task since Jeepers have been doing this very same exercise since the mid-90’s. I found one in Bremerton, WA (90 minutes and a toll bridge away). But upon arrival, one shaft and the opposite side brake assembly had already been pilfered. I found another one in Port Angeles (4 hours and a ferry ride or 5 slow hours on scenic Highway 101 away). But shortly after setting out that direction I got a call from the yard saying they actually didn’t have it.

I’ll be hitting up another couple quasi-local yards this AM but unless someone less-than-greedy pops up on Craigsl*st I may end up having to trek down to the eastern side of Portland next week.

So, that is why I’ve been scarce lately.

If any of you under or un-employed programmers out there want to make a fortune and possibly win a Nobel, write a program that wrecking yard employees can use that makes their real-time inventory available in an searchable data base web users can cruise. Car-Part.Com has the idea, but the functionality of it is so poor as to be suicide inducing.

Pics if I’m successful. Later.

UPDATE: Score!

The bastiges had two of them. Neither had the drums, but those are easy to find. I picked the nicer looking and tighter of the pair and scurried my butt out of there before I began to weep like a little girl.