Dana 35 with 3.07 gears: Should I upgrade?

mud, you need wheel speed, but why 35s? that changes everything

go here..

http://www.grimmjeeper.com/gears.html

First off, dump the dual steering stabilizer. It's not needed and is only going to wreck your gear box ... quickly!

Second, the 4.0 is a straight 6 not a V6

Third, I would not recommend 35s on a 16 year olds Jeep with a Dana 35 ... it won't last long.

You and your son will hate the Jeep with 35's and 3.07 gearing!!! The Dana 35 also stands a good chance of not surviving the 35's just with normal driving on the street. Plan to spend a good chunk of money to get that Jeep ready for 35's.

I would go with 33s and Super 35 that rear axle.

I once drove a TJ with 3.07 and 31"s and I hated it l. I can't imagine how shitty 35"s would be with that gear ratio. You know how gear ratio changes affect driving right? The lower the number, the less torque. A Jeep with 3.07 and 35" will be downright annoying to drive. It will feel gutless. And that is if the Dana 35 will survive... A 16 year old won't necessarily baby that Jeep.

You posted a lot of panic triggers that probably had people spraying their beverages out of their noses. Who put you up to this?

Ive got a 2001 Jeep Wrangler sahara with the 3.07 gear and i'm running 31inch tires. I am in the middle of getting 3.73 gears. I was fine until I drove a rubicon with 4.10s and 31 inch tires and thought it was really great. This was just driving on the street, I havent been out on the trail yet. Im hoping to go with 32" tires, I think this will be a pretty good combination.

rancholago said:

Ive got a 2001 Jeep Wrangler sahara with the 3.07 gear and i'm running 31inch tires. I am in the middle of getting 3.73 gears. I was fine until I drove a rubicon with 4.10s and 31 inch tires and thought it was really great. This was just driving on the street, I havent been out on the trail yet. Im hoping to go with 32" tires, I think this will be a pretty good combination.

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Huh?
You should be getting 4.10's at the very least.

Buy some out the boneyard from a 4 cylinder. It's the same exact axle

Rubicon88 said:

Huh?
You should be getting 4.10's at the very least.

Buy some out the boneyard from a 4 cylinder. It's the same exact axle

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Looks like he has the 3 speed auto, if staying on 31s might be ok. Agree, swap with 4cyl 4.10 axle is the cheapest way to get the 4.10s.

People have very opinionated thoughts on 35's on a Dana 35 Some have wheeled an open Dana 35 on 35" tires and been fine, some haven't. I think the biggest factor is driving style and how much skinny pedal you use. With that being said, I have a manual TJ with 3.07 gears on 33" tires and it's an absolute turd. The gear ratio does not compliment the tire size, it's sluggish and bogs down on any incline over a 6% grade at highway speeds. 35" tires will only be worse.
I just swapped in a HP Dana 30 that I will eventually re-gear truss, tube, ect. for strength and it will eventually get a posi locker or limited slip..but I'm not going to put any money into my 3.07 Dana 35 rear... because it won't fit with MY wheeling style. I'm going to rework a Ford Explorer 8.8 and that will get a selectable locker and a Barns truss ($350ish) that has all the spring perches and mounting locations you need for the TJ. You do have to run a 1" spacer on those 8.8's to get the axle width back to 60.5", however. You should be able to swap in a fully reworked 8.8 with disk brakes for around $2000-$2300 on the HIGH side.

If you do decide to put money into the Dana 35 because you don't want to do an axle swap or do fab work (which I understand, I'm learning to do all that as I go along)- look into what they call a Super35 Kit. There's many discussions about them on here and @Jerry has some great insight about Dana 35's on the strength/weak points.

BentonJB said:

I'm seeking advice for the best economical solution as to re-gearing/upgrading axles. I have a 2002 Wrangler/Sahara, 4.0, Automatic. It has a Dana 35 with 3.07 gears. This past Tuesday I finally got the Rough Country 4" X-Series lift installed w/ a dual steering stabilizer, SYE kit, and CV Rear Drive Shaft

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I had that lift on my old Sahara with 35s and was surprised how well the control arm bushings held up to 3 years of mud. They just need regular greasing. You might want some better riding shocks. Add a BL if you're going to run 35s. You need 4.56 gears for that transmission. 4.10 might be livable. A S35 would be the way to go. You don't want your son driving down the highway and seeing his rear wheel roll by when/if the stock Dana 35 axle breaks. That being said, I know a guy who ran 35s on a Dana 35 for 7 years with very mild offroad use. It's a crapshoot if you don't upgrade it.

I have the Dana 35 and my son drove it all through high school but WAS a pretty quiet to him self kid so seemed to treat the jeep right. It had 31s and 307 and even that was not great. We switched to 33 and much slower, swapped in some 410 axles from a 4cl and was a huge difference. It seems to be all in how fast you try to accelerate that breaks them. Good luck

I had a Dana 35 with 3.07s on 32" tires. 5th & 6th gears were 100% unusable unless my intent was to drive 120mph. The Dana 35 imploded and I replaced with Dana 44 and 4.10s. 6th is still rarely used at highway speeds.

I have no idea how anyone suffers 3.07s.

BentonJB said:

I'm seeking advice for the best economical solution as to re-gearing/upgrading axles. I have a 2002 Wrangler/Sahara, 4.0 v6, Automatic. It has a Dana 35 with 3.07 gears. This past Tuesday I finally got the Rough Country 4" X-Series lift installed w/ a dual steering stabilizer, SYE kit, and CV Rear Drive Shaft; all from Rough Country. I'm also putting Mickey Thompson's 35" tires with 17" wheels.

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Your son is definitely going to experience a broken axle shaft with 35's with a stock Dana 35 since you say he'll be taking it offroad. I wouldn't do it. You have 3 choices... 1) Replace the Dana 35 with a Dana 44 axle. 2) Downsize to 33" tires. 3) Install a Super 35 kit that comes with 30 spline 1541H axle shafts. Personally I'd go with the Super 35, though if you go that way make darned sure it has 30 spline shafts (larger than the stock Dana 35 shafts in a Dana 35) and that they're made with 1541H steel.

For those who say it's only opinionated whether a Dana 35 will break with 35" tires, no it's not... it's only a matter of when it will break.

For your 3-speed automatic, regear it to 4.56. And don't even consider just swapping in another Dana 30/Dana 35 that was already regeared to 4.10. A Dana 35 will snap a shaft with 35's sooner or later. And with offroading it's gonna happen real soon.

This is what happened to a friend of mine while I was wheeling with her last year. I had no idea she was still running a Dana 35 or I'd have had her riding with me on that trail instead of letting her drive her TJ that had 35's and a stock Dana 35. It turned into an all-day ordeal that also required another friend drive 150 miles round trip to bring us a replacement axle shaft to install in camp that night.


P.S. Remove that second steering stabilizer. It's not needed and it just makes the power steering have to work a lot harder. On a hot day that second steering stabilizer could cause the PS system to overheat.

2001slvrstntj said:

Looks like he has the 3 speed auto, if staying on 31s might be ok. Agree, swap with 4cyl 4.10 axle is the cheapest way to get the 4.10s.

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He said he wants to go to a 32" ...
3.73's would be foolish

I love my 3:07 R&P's !

So much so, I am upgrading them.

Just need to settle on a shop to do the regear.

CodaMan said:

First off, dump the dual steering stabilizer. It's not needed and is only going to wreck your gear box ... quickly!

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lol

Ok

TheBoogieman said:

I had that lift on my old Sahara with 35s and was surprised how well the control arm bushings held up to 3 years of mud. They just need regular greasing. You might want some better riding shocks. Add a BL if you're going to run 35s. You need 4.56 gears for that transmission. 4.10 might be livable. A S35 would be the way to go. You don't want your son driving down the highway and seeing his rear wheel roll by when/if the stock Dana 35 axle breaks. That being said, I know a guy who ran 35s on a Dana 35 for 7 years with very mild offroad use. It's a crapshoot if you don't upgrade it.
View attachment 251056
View attachment 251057

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This ^^^^^ is a good post

Axles are like this...
The less finesse you drive with the stronger the axle you'll need.

The more finesse you drive with and sense of feel the more your axles will survive.

My prior owner put 50K miles on 35s with 3.07 gears. I imagine he hated every minute of it. I have 4.56 and 33s. I would have went super35 but I wanted truetracks and that’s for 27 spline only.