Is there a 3.54 gear option?

[BugoutJeep]

Thanks that's very informative. I was towing yesterday and taking off on an incline was not very easy. Once I was moving it was no problem. I don't know the weight, but I was going to take my truck but the batteries were bad so I grabbed the Jeep. I think the trailer weighed in empty around 1500-2k lbs when I went over the scales years ago. I'm guessing I was towing a few thousand lbs.

When I got back and went and grabbed batteries for the truck I crawled under the Jeep because my tank skid plate still shows signs that I've got a fuel leak. I still have the fuel leak, but now I've got a pinion seal out in the rear as well. At least the truck runs and it's warm out for a bit (it doesn't have defrost, which is rough in the mornings).

The fact that I was towing, worries me that it's not just a seal that went bad.

While looking for seals on Rockauto just to have a feel for pricing, I noticed there's options for Dana gears and Dana Spicer gears, which are twice as much. What's the difference?

 

[BugoutJeep]

While looking for the pinion seal, I was looking more at my options in lockers and gearing. Looks like for the Dana 35 with an ARB locker, the minimum numerically I can go with 30 spline axle shafts is 3.54. In fact I think that was one issue with going with a Dana 44 in my application was locker options. Seems like it's a different carrier below 3.73 in the Dana 44.

I had been thinking of just leaving the gearing alone, but after this seal I think no matter what I'd like new pinions front and rear, so I'll be buying new gears and probably the Dana-spicer ones, which appear to have more stuff with them.