Dana 70 question

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Oct 7, 2006 | 05:13 PM

tomas428

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Dana 70 question

I found a dana 70 at a scrap metal place today and the guy told me it came out of an mid 70's ford f350 DRW truck, he told me for 100 bucks i could have it.

I've heard that there is 23 and 35 spline axles, so what my question is if it is a 23 spline would a 35 spline locker fit in it so that i could use 35 spline axle shafts?

Oct 7, 2006 | 08:18 PM

Kenworth

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It all depends most of the time the old 70s trucks had odd spline counts. The best thing to do is pull the shafts and check but otherwise the dually dana 70s have a narrow spring pad width. A SRW dana 70 is very rare.

Oct 7, 2006 | 11:37 PM

ivanribic

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From: Spokane, WA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kenworth

A SRW dana 70 is very rare.

They were used in plenty of 80's trucks and vans . . . they're not as common as a D60 or a Sterling but they're by no means rare.

The real question here is do you want a dually axle? Spring perches are easy to move. The issue, IIRC, is that dually axles are wider at the wheel mounting surface than a SRW axle. So unless you're using custom wheels with EXTREME backspacing or you're actually building a dually it's not a good choice.

To answer your question though, yes, you can swap new 35 spline shafts and carrier into a Dana 70 if it didn't come with them. The downside is that you'll often end up paying as much or more for the shafts as you did for the axle, making this swap not worthwhile.

Last note, kind of related but not really, if you can find a machine shop to bore the spindles you can swap 35 spline 1.5" axle shafts into a Dana 60 rear axle. Some of the rock crawlers do this because there are more parts available for the D60 and it weighs a bit less.

Oct 8, 2006 | 01:09 AM

Kenworth

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This rear axle is supposidly from a 70s truck which makes it fairly rare as most F-350 srws had dana 60s. Also don't forget Dana made a odd ball 61 or 62 can't remember the model number but it has large hubs looks like a Dana 70 but its not.

In the 80s Dana 70 srws were a little more common especially in the 80s Fords when they were just before Ford started producing the 10.25.

Oct 8, 2006 | 06:35 AM

Jmudder79

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From: New Gretna, New Jersey

It was a 61, I had one of them.