Dana300 Tear down
After a few weeks of the Pathmaker sitting and me searching high and low for a local Dana 300, by local I mean on Vancouver Island, because everything else has a ferry ticket attached and I’m a cheap cunt. I finally met up with my buddy Donny and grabbed an old case he had sitting out in the weeds for a few years behind his shop.
After shelling out “A Dollar per Dana” I headed home with my prize. It was time to do a little filming as I tore down the case and reinstall my outputs. I also had to figure out my new t-case mount that I picked up from
Back Door Fab. BDF is a local fab shop with a plasma table and a brazillion different files and designs of almost anything off road you can imagine.
The fluid looked surprisingly clean when I drained it out. Considering it had been laying in the weeds for a few years, so I tossed it up on the bench and started to tear into it. Thankfully a Dana 300 is a super easy to tear down case, with not much more than a socket set and a 3 jaw puller needed to tear it all down and strip the outputs off so you can remove all the gears.
Once I pulled the cover off the case I saw some metal filings on the magnetic drain plug. Not a massive amount for a 30+yr old t-case with an unknown life. Of course I had to run to Princess Auto for a new 3-Jaw puller and a new Torx bit after breaking two of mine trying to take the input plate off. After breaking two bits I just pulled out the ole drill and drilled it out. As soon as the bit cut into the bolt it spun right out thankfully.
If you’re gonna be dumb….
After tearing everything apart fully and tossing my new truss mount onto the case I only at that minute realized that I had unknowlingly ended up with another “Short Tail Shaft or Texas Bolt Pattern” dana 300 which came in a limited number of International Scouts. While everything else on the case is the same, unfortuantely I have an upgraded JB conversions rear 32 Spline output, which is designed for the long tail shaft Dana 300 found in the Jeep CJ, which I thought was what I was buying.
So after all of that the case is not the one I need. I’m back on the hunt for another Dana 300 long tail-shaft version so I can get the Pathmaker back on the trail.
Watch below for the video:
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