converting hubs into drive flanges

[eric©]

I currently have auto hubs on my 91 Explorer, and one of them doesn't like to engage most of the time. I don't have the money for a manual hub swap right now (and probably won't for a while). I've been thinking about welding them up to become drive flanges. I'm not concerned about the drop in gas mileage (don't put many miles on this truck anyways), and with the Swampers on the truck, the vibration from the front driveshaft won't be adding anything I don't already feel, lol.

What does concern me tho is having the front output of the transfer case always turning in 2WD. Will that hurt the transfer case at all (currently have a 1354 electric shift)?

 

[Doug]

No it won't hurt it. But why weld it? One the welds will probably break when you need it the most and secondly you're going to have to replace the shafts and spindles once you get hubs. Spindles are expensive and the stub shafts aren't to cheap either.

 

[eric©]

No it won't hurt it. But why weld it? One the welds will probably break when you need it the most and secondly you're going to have to replace the shafts and spindles once you get hubs. Spindles are expensive and the stub shafts aren't to cheap either.

my current plan is to weld the drive gear to the splined sleeve (the part that slides over the stub shaft). That would permanently engage the drive gear, I don't see how that would affect the shafts or spindles at all. As for the welds breaking, if the welding is done properly, the parts should break before the welds.

I won't be doing anything even approaching wheeling, I just want the 4WD there in case its needed for something like when I parked in a dry hard pack gravel field last week, it stormed, and said field then became a mud pit that I just barely made it out of in 2WD.

 

[wattsgame]

hey man my auto's are not working eather ive been looking for a thread to permanatly lock them in if you do do this please let me know how it comes out
thanks