I have a 95 f-150 4x4 that came stock with 3.31 gears in it. I decided to go with 4.10 gears after the lift and 33" tires. i have had the 4.10's in the rear for quite some time now and have been running without a front driveshaft since i havent had any time to take care of the front. Since it is my daily driver i cant afford to get halfway through it and finish another day, so i decided i would try to find a used dana 44 IFS housing and then i could buy gears and an open carrier and set up the gears completely without touching my truck, and then just swap center sections out and it would only take 2 hours. So i got a used housing from I believe it was out of a 1980 bronco. The gears are installed and all set up, and i took the front end out of my truck last night to swap, but my problem is that i didnt realize there was another bearing on the outside of the case that supports the right stub shaft, i thoght it was just the seal, but there is a bearing behind it, and all i bought was the seal. No problem i thought, since i have my stock diff out of the truck, i can pull the bearing out of there. That is when i realized that the bore on the right side of the housing where the bearing and seal go is much larger in diameter than that of the housing originally in my 95. So i couldnt put it together because i didnt have to parts. so today i get the correct seal and bearing for the 1980 D44IFS. The seal is the right size for the bore and so is the bearing. The problem now is that the inner diameter of the correct bearing is too small for my axle shaft to slide through it, and even if it did slide through, the inner diameter of the seal is much larger than my shaft so it wouldnt be sealing anything! So i think my problem now lies in my axle shaft. I think maybe the earlier D44 IFS right side stub shafts had a thinner land for the bearing race so it can slide though this bearing, but after the bearing land i believe tose shafts got larger in size to fill the large hole in the seal. So my question finally is, am i right in assuming this, and if so, can i buy the 2 piece right side axle set for an older truck and install it in mine with no problem? or will it slide into my diff fine but then it wont work with my late model hud or spindle if they may be different. Any help is greatly appreciated.
-John

 

I don't know why you're having that problem. I just swapped a whole '96 axle under my truck, then had the original '83 chunk freshened up, and then swapped it straight into the '96 axle, just like you tried to do. I had NO problems using the '83 chunk with the '96 axles, and I've been driving on it (using 4WD occasionally) for months now. I can measure my old '83 diff stub next week (if I remember), but I'm sure it's gonna be the same as your '95. Can you track down the original one from the '80?

 

I believe the reason that you didnt have the problem is because i remember when I was looking for the bearings and seals in the parts catalog, it was showing 83-96 were all the same. So your 83 axle should have all the same components. My housing is a pre- 83 and that apparently was a different design. To shed some light, I was at Jeffs Bronco graveyard website and saw a picture of a stub axle that he claimed would fit 80-96 trucks. But i noticed it is different than the one in my 95. The shaft doesnt get bigger after the splines like mine does, so that axle would slide through the bearing, and then after the bearing land it gets much larger, which would fill the large hole in the seal. So I am confident now that this is the shaft that I need, i only hope that it is the same length as mine so when i put it in i dont have any other issues.
-john

 

I believe the reason that you didnt have the problem is because i remember when I was looking for the bearings and seals in the parts catalog, it was showing 83-96 were all the same. So your 83 axle should have all the same components. My housing is a pre- 83 and that apparently was a different design. To shed some light, I was at Jeffs Bronco graveyard website and saw a picture of a stub axle that he claimed would fit 80-96 trucks. But i noticed it is different than the one in my 95. The shaft doesnt get bigger after the splines like mine does, so that axle would slide through the bearing, and then after the bearing land it gets much larger, which would fill the large hole in the seal. So I am confident now that this is the shaft that I need, i only hope that it is the same length as mine so when i put it in i dont have any other issues.
-john