Hybrid 609 Axle Build - MOAB I

Today on Xtreme 4x4, the search for the ultimate axle ends when we build a 609. And you know, everybody loves potato salad,

especially the one famous for its carnage. We'll take you to Moab

S legendary trail Potato salad hill,

whether it's trail riding, competition, rock crawling short course racing or even desert racing.

The one constant in off roading is the search for the ultimate part.

And you guys know what I'm talking about. We're looking for the perfect engine combination, bulletproof transmissions, bomb proof transfer cases and we're always on the lookout for stronger axles because to be honest to say that we push these parts to their limit is an understatement.

Off roading is probably the only motor sport that basically revolves around trying to break the unbreakable all in order to tear it apart and build it bigger and better than next time.

And just like the old saying goes, if you build a better mouse trap, the world will be the path to your door. And that's what we're going to build today. Probably the newest thing to hit axles since the invention of the high point gear set. And it's a hybrid axle, it's called a 609. It borrows the strength of two popular axle assemblies. One being the Ford nine inch with its removable third member and the

being the Dana 60 with a super strong outer knuckles and rear bearing supports. Now, this axle assembly has become so popular lately, companies like Spider tracks off road offer complete kits to build your own wheel hub to wheel hub.

Now, today we're gonna take you step by step through the process of building a complete custom axle assembly. And the first thing you need to do is set your width.

Now, in order to truly nail the width on your custom axle assembly, it's a good idea to have your tires and wheels already picked out for the project. Now, in this case, we're gonna be using these Interco I

rock 39 5 by 13 5 tires. They have an aggressive three stage lug design

and the outer logs actually have a scoop cut into them that really help this thing bite into the mud and dirt.

The sipping that's cut into the tire blocks actually opens up as the tire heats up to help the tire with clean out and the tread compound as well as the tough side wall really makes these tires shine on the rocks.

We are mounting them on trail ready 17 by 10 steel bead locks with a high polished extra wide ring to protect the valves down.

The recessed fasters help protect the bold heads from the rocks to prevent bead lock failure during extreme rock crawling

to help set the wind of our rear axle. We're gonna use two pieces of three inch exhaust tubing that slide inside of each other with two unit bearings mounted on either end.

Now, the nice thing about using a mock up assembly like this is not only can we build all the brackets and tabs to fit this exhaust tubing and then transfer to the real axle,

but because we have this sliding feature built in, we can set the axle at different winds and try them out. Let's say we wanted to try 70 inches, we just slide these tubes tack them, then we can cycle the suspension up and down, see if the tires hitting any tubes or body panels. If the width is too wide or too narrow, just cut the tack, move it to a different one and try it there. You can't really do that with a real axle because it's fixed. And plus, since this thing is just really light exhaust tubing,

all we have to do is tackle our brackets on with a real light tack and that'll make them a lot easier to move around if we have to,

with our mock up axle in place and temporarily tacked to the link ends,

we can set our first wind at 60 inches flat.

Now, this is obviously the point in time when you want to articulate our mock up axle and see if it hits any part of our chassis or truck.

Now, if you're doing this with removable body panels on your buggy, you're gonna wanna put those back on at this time.

Now, you can see on this chassis with a 60 inch width that this tire is gonna start to get into this lower bar before the suspension is fully compressed. So the solution is simple, basically change our mock up width come a little wider and then retest it.

You don't wanna go too wide though because we don't want to limit the trails we can ride on and plus anything that comes down the side of this chassis on the rub rail, we wanna make sure it actually hits the tire. It doesn't get hung up between the tire and the axle and basically stop us on the trail and we don't wanna go too narrow either because then the chassis itself becomes top heavy and it's easy to roll over. Well, now we're gonna let you on a little secret. We're not building these axles specifically for the spider. We're actually building them for a buggy that we're designing on a computer program.

The chassis these will eventually live under. I'm designing on a computer program called Ben Tech Pro.

This way, we can actually draw the axles on the screen and check where the tires will go.

This is a mid size four seater chassis and we'll probably end up putting a V6 power plant in

with our mock up complete and a wig decided upon, we can finally start building some axles. Now you can build the 609 using junkyard parts.

You just have to find an old Ford nine inch like this one. Strip it down. Hope that it's straight. Get a Dana 50 or a Dana 60

cut the knuckle off, clean it out and weld it on the end of the housing. But there are some benefits to using the aftermarket pieces that we got from spider tracks and it starts with the housing

else. This is a one piece steel shell that's specifically designed for rock crawling. It's one of the strongest in the aftermarket and it's way stronger than any stock nine inch ever was.

The ceiling face has been CNC machine

after the tubes have been welded into the housing. So we know we're gonna have a good seal as well as positive engagement into our axles. As you can see in this cutaway, the tolerances between the ring gear and the housing are super tight. So we're gonna have great ground clearance

at the end of the tubes, we're going to be welding on an FFO 50 big bearing cup,

a unit bearing that's been modified to fit a 35 sply drive slug.

And then we're going to be installing spider tracks, new oversized brake rotor and four piston caliber. This will increase our braking up to 30%. Now, all we have to do is transfer the measurements from our mock up axle onto this new one and we can start to cut.

Oh, and this thing only weighs 60 pounds

knowing that the width of our axle is going to be 62.5 inches. We need to do some math to plan our cuts.

The wheel bearings and rotors add four inches of wood to either end of the tube.

So with it marked at 27 and a quarter inches from the pin center,

we can go ahead and cut.

Now, if you're using bearing ends from a junkyard axle, you need to assemble them to determine how much wood we're gonna add to your two.

Every set up will be different

before final welding recheck everything with a dry fit just to make sure

coming up, we're going to Jeep Safari, Moe's

annual event that brings in Jeepers Far and wide. Stay tuned.

Hell, Dorado Hell's Revenge and Potato Salad Hill. To the uneducated. Those may sound like B rated slasher film titles. But to the hardcore four Wheler can only mean one thing. Moab

since 1966. The rocks around southern Utah have hosted the biggest off road event in the world.

The Moab

Easter, Jeep Safari, this is the Oz Fest of off roading right here. If you're into four Wheel, this is the place you gotta be. And for nine days leading up to Easter they arrive by the 1000

load has about 7, 8000 people.

And during

safari will go up to almost 50,000 people. They come to run some of the 50 trails which range from easy to extreme.

Moab

is the rock crawling capital of the world. I mean, you know, it doesn't get any better, surrounded by epic scenery on every trail four wheel and doesn't get any better than this. You gotta look at that off the view in the background.

You don't get that in Pennsylvania. It's breathtaking.

Yes, it is. It's just something that you can't look in a book and then understand until you come up here, the off road companies are also here providing awesome sites of their own seeing the manufacturers rolling out their best products and you're seeing them on a Jeep instead of in a catalog.

It's awesome

on one of Moab

S Classic Trails today. We're heading out on Hell's Revenge. Skyjacker hosted their annual Moab

run and showed off their newest suspension system. We've got our six inch kit on this one, testing out our new rebuildable rod ends and long travel suspension kit with his family on board.

The new six inch lift made a mockery of

the toughest obstacles we haven't gotten hung up or

haven't found anything we couldn't do. It's been great. We articulated it and a lot of maneuvers up and down the trails and everything worked fine. We had a good driver but the suspension helped out a lot. It has proved to do very well. Fresh off getting his driver's license, 17 year old Mark mckay

headed to the skyjacker run. This is the way you want to spend your spring break.

Sporting every accessory skyjacker makes for the TJ. Mark's passion for the company started early on

ever since Mark's been the little boy, he's been loving the skyjacker pirates. They have awesome stickers

a long way from his boyhood sticker collection.

Mark handled the rock more like a 17 year veteran of moa.

I think most of the fun is in the challenge of just having to guide the Jef up over the obstacles, knowing that you could slide backwards or roll over at any moment and just pushing it through the tip over challenge obstacle befuddled some

but not Mark. He takes it nice and slow and doesn't try to rush through. Everything

hasn't rolled over

and hopefully not anytime soon

when it came to the five rated hot tub. Mom knows best mom said no. Well, I am the mom,

I can say no to the hot tub if I think I want to. That didn't ruin Mark's first trip. I can't see myself ever stopping this. It's just too much fun.

After a day on the trails, the action moves to the most famous Hill and Four Wheeling. We're a potato salad in Moab

Utah and it's lots of fun. Potato salad hill is just a classic

getting its name from when the picnic staple spilled during a roll. This place continues to put drivers into a pickle from here. It looks like it's just ledges. Once you're up on it you'll notice crazy angles to that hill that challenge everybody that tempts it. How's that?

That pretty much tells you what it's like, some choose to watch what it's like. It takes guts more than I have, as they say here on potato salad hill.

No guts, no glory.

Well, sometimes you make it sometimes you don't. It's a tough hill man. It's slippery. It's bumpy, it's loose at the top. It throws you around my good times in mo

A,

that's what it's all about. I will do it again.

Now, the guy behind the wheel on that Jeep, his name is Chad Dalton and apparently he's climbed that hill many times without any problems. But I'll bet you right about here.

He's kind of wishing he'd put bead locks on that. Jeep.

We're back on Xtreme 4x4 and we're right in the middle of the step by step process of building two of the hottest axles to hit off roading. And that's the hybrid 609 assembly. Now, we've already showed you how to select the width of any axle by using a mockup assembly underneath our buggy. And then we went ahead and built the complete rear housing, wheel mount to wheel mount. Now, we can work on the front end. Obviously, if it's a front end, it's gonna need some type of steering knuckle. Now, we're gonna use Spider Tracks, ultimate knuckle assembly. Now, these things are a fully fabricated knuckle. So welding on them isn't gonna be an issue like welding on cast.

They use spherical bearings instead of ball joints that allow us to get a full 60 degrees worth of turning without binding.

Now, inside, it's large enough to fit any Dana 60 U joint, we can fit the Bobby long CV S for the Dana 60 or we can even fit in the new Spider tracks. 1550 joint,

we know the total width is 62.5 inches.

But with a front axle, you need to calculate the location of your pin

to find the new center of our front axle housing.

We'll measure over eight inches from the pinon center line.

Assembling the entire outer knuckle and brake assembly will help determine how much wind they will add to the axle itself for the Spider Tracks unit.

It's 11 and 5/8 of an inch.

Uh just like on the rear axle. All of our measurements for wid, they're gonna start right at our center line.

Now, we know that each knuckle is gonna add 11 and five eights to the end of the tube or a total of 23 and a quarter to the total overall width. Now we want 62.5. So inside the knuckles is gonna be 39 and a quarter or 19 and five eights from our center line. Now, this is where we're gonna have to get a little creative. If we come over 19 and 5/8 of an inch from the center line, we really don't have much space on the tube to mount a suspension component. Especially if we wanna run leaf springs.

It's a good idea to leave at least this much space between your housing and your knuckle, especially if you're using junk yard housings because they've been a cast deal. You want to limit the amount of welding you do there. Now, if we're gonna move this over to make room for a leaf spring, all we're gonna do is move the center line over until our 19 and five eights lands on the outside of it.

It's not a big deal. Ideally, we want the pinion center line to be right in line with our transfer case output on the front. But if it's not,

it's not that big of a deal.

Now, if the housing cut to length and the seas slid onto the tubes, we need to set the caster angle. Now, castor is a relationship between the upper and lower ball joint and true vertical and we want about 3 to 5 degrees of positive castor or leaning back of this knuckle. Now, to check this, we're gonna set our third member mounting

flange at 10 degrees up to lessen the pinion angle for the front

and then we can just drop another angle finder on top of the knuckle and we're trying to chase down 3 to 5 degrees of leaning back. Now, what this will do is it'll help the truck when you're driving it, help the tires do what's called return to center and it will also remove any death wobble. Well, return to center. Obviously, that go the steering wheel, the wheels come back to straight just like on a shopping cart and death wobble. We've all had that shopping cart with a crazy caster. You don't want your wheels doing that.

Now, Castor is not the only measurement we're concerned with on our front axle. When we ordered our wheels from trail ready, we ordered a very specific zero offset. That means that the mounting flange of the wheel is pressed in, so it's dead center inside the rim shell itself. Now, this is gonna affect what's called scrub radius. A scrub

radius is measured by an imaginary line drawn once again through your upper and lower ball joint where it hits the ground and an imaginary line drawn right through the center of the tire and where it hits the ground, this distance is your scrub radius. Now, if you wanted a wider set of axles, but didn't want to build them and you ordered custom wheels that pushed the tire out further, you're actually going to increase that scrub radius and you want to keep this scrub radius as close to zero as you can

because it's gonna minimize the effort in your steering system.

And you probably think that's not a big deal. But when you're talking full hydraulic steering, if you work it a lot just on level ground, it'll actually start to overheat and you can aerate the fluid and you can actually lose steering power.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where we've just finished putting together two complete hybrid 609 axle housings. Now, so far, we've used some pretty high end and pretty trick parts building these things. So we don't wanna limit ourselves when it comes to the third member. The one downfall to the Ford nine inch is that the housing itself was only ever available in a low pin carrier option. That obviously means your drive

shaft is more susceptible to trail damage and the U joint is easier to bind when the suspension fully droops out. Well, true high nine makes a complete replacement carrier for the Ford nine inch that offers a true two and a quarter inches of vertical separation for the pinion making it a true high pinion differential. Now, the load bolt on the back of the ring gear and the three bearing pinion make this one of the strongest

sets in the aftermarket. And we chose the 538 gear option. Now, they only sell these things completely assembled. So, you know, the gears are set up right in the first place and you can opt for different lockers or supply your own. We chose an A RB air locker because it works kind of like a spool. It's either locked or it's open some unlimited slips out there actually load and unload your axle shafts which can cause them to prematurely fail.

And with a third member dropped in place, all that's left is to go ahead and measure for the axle shafts and spider tracks will cut them specifically for this housing.

And then this thing is pretty much done. Well, aside from bending up the chassis that's gonna go on top of these.

Now, everything we did today does not just apply to building a brand new axle assembly

applies to when you use used parts as well. Everything from setting the wid to the pinion offset cast, strangle on your front knuckles. The one benefit to using all new parts like this is you're gonna buy yourself a lot of reliability when you're out on the trail. And with the trend nowadays being more and more families out wheeling, having that reliability

is often nice.