Should I truss and gusset my Dana 30?

Jeepster78

Jeepster78

TJ Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 8, 2021
Messages
112
Location
Albuquerque, NM
Tried looking up info on trusses and gussets but couldn’t find anything. I wanted to know thoughts on strengthening my front Dana 30. The way me and the wife off road is the trails in the alpine loop in CO and some mild rock crawling in Moab and NM. I have the front Dana 30 out and I’m going to regear and put 35” tires and put chromoly axles with the beefier u joints. Should I weld a truss and c gussets on to give added strength or leave it alone?
 
Absolutely no need for a truss or inner axle sleeves for a Dana 30 and 35's. My former TJ with a Dana 30 with 35's, locker, and used on VERY tough trails was uneventful other than having broken a front axle shaft on a particularly tough rock crawling trail called Sledgehammer in Johnson Valley shown below.

Eliminate the chance of a broken front axle shaft by replacing the front axle shafts with 4340 replacements like from www.revolutiongear.com

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Ok thanks for the input! Another question, I was planning on getting the upper control arm bushings from savvy for the Dana 30 it’s a kit that you have to cut off one of the upper control arm bushing attachment and weld their Jonny joint specific bushing on. Is that worth it or should I just use the factory control arm bushing?
 
I've been all over the alpine loop on a number of stock Dana 30 housings and never had one hint of an issue. As has already been pointed out, there are others of us that wheel on much rougher terrain with the same.
 
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Reactions: jjvw and Jerry Bransford
one thing you might consider is grabbing some "mini skids" to weld on to the lower control arm mounts to beef them up.

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Reactions: PurpleTJAZ
If you are still using factory control arms then I would just replace the existing bushings in your current axle.
 
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