Rear Half Axle question

[debo75]

Hello all,

First off, y'all have a great community here with an excellent amount of good info. I've been crusing F-150 sites for a long time and this place is on par with the best.

Now for my question- I have an '03 2wd XLS 3.55 no LSD. The wife tore the CV boot up on the passenger side which I replaced, but now a couple of years later and the half axle is finally going. My question is did Ford really build 2 different half axles for the rear end? Every parts site I visit, they have separate listings for axles for traction control and non traction control vehicles. It just doesn't make sense to me that the axle would be different unless they did something nifty like splined them differently. Any help would be appreciated as I can find traction control axles all day long, but only the dealer for the non TC unit.

 

[EXPLORER04]

if i read the factory manual right the traction control shaft has a type of tone ring on it to sense shaft speed and the standard on does not. I have seen a few regular ones up on ebay. Hope this helps.

 

[jrford]

yep TC has a tone ring, . . off chance the Tone ring one will work? i don't think it would matter if it was extra . ..

 

[debo75]

is the tone ring located somewhere on the axle assembly that would make it fit differently from the regular one?

 

[EXPLORER04]

i am almost 100% positive that the tone ring is on the outer part of the cv joint so it should not interfere with anything and should work

 

[debo75]

Awesome, thanks. The price difference is staggering, given the fact that I can only find the non TC shafts at Ford dealers.