Four Wheeler January 2023

This month’s Four Wheeler shines the lightbar on axles, and we all have opinions and recollections about the axles under the 4x4s we’ve owned or currently own. The good, the bad, and the downright ugly. The first 4x4 I owned was in the early 1980s, a ’76 K5 Blazer. If I remember correctly, it had a Dana 44 front axle and a 12-bolt rear axle. The K5 was shod with 36-inch-diameter mud-terrains, which was a fairly large diameter tire for the era. I think both axles had open differentials, which wasn’t ideal, and I often wished the gearing had been matched to the increase in tire size. The young me wasn’t kind to that K5 but even after substantial axle abuse, in part due to a heavy right foot and those…

DAN’S ’56 WILLYS TRUCK I enjoyed the September ’22 Trail’s End article on the ’56 Willys truck. I have a ’49 with a Buick 231 V-6, ’84 Chevy Blazer axles, Mercury short-back bucket seats, and 33-inch BFGs on the Blazer Rally wheels. The Blazer’s highway gears are not cutting it. I’m not sure what direction to go yet, steeper gears or new axles? It has the stock three-speed transmission and transfer case. I drive it around town for fun and have taken it to the beautiful Silver Lake State Park sand dunes here in Michigan. DAN VIA EMAIL STEPHEN’S ’56 WILLYS TRUCK This is our wonderful ’56 Willy’s pickup truck. We purchased this from a ranch in Colorado with a gas can strapped to the hood. Just looking for attention. We tried to keep it as original…

In the News • Most stolen whips in 2021? The National Insurance Crime Bureau’s Hot Wheels annual theft list found that fullsize pickups ranked highest, with Chevy taking the top-stolen spot, followed by Ford. GMC fullsizes ranked 6th. The Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee landed at No. 9 (and debuted for the first time in the top 10). Vehicle thefts overall were up 8 percent in 2021. • J.D. Power 2022 Tech Experience Index Study is about ’22 model year vehicles and their advanced vehicle tech—and problems using said tech. The fingerprint reader was the biggest problem reported in the study’s history, beating out the previous winning loser, gesture controls, which is not what you think, but probably would have been more successful had it been. • We’ll just set this joyful news…

HIGH-UP TENT Quadratec’s Lost Canyon brand Rove Edition Rooftop Tent is engineered to bring comfort and convenience to off-road enthusiasts. The tent is said to mount to any vehicle equipped with a roof rack or crossbars and offers a 96x49-inch sleeping footprint, providing enough interior space for two people. The spacious rooftop tent offers the comfort of home with thoughtful, modern features while still allowing users to immerse in the outdoors with a quick-release skylight and large screen side windows. Designed to withstand heavy-duty adventures, the Rove Tent uses rugged 600D ripstop polyester fabric to protect occupants from the elements, and mounts using sturdy honeycomb aluminum and a one-inch aluminum exterior platform for additional strength. Other unique features include dual interior climate control venting, USB-powered LED lights, a shoe bag and…

The 1-ton Dana 60—in both wrecking yard and custom aftermarket varieties—is arguably the most common axle ever swapped into the front of a 4x4. If you’ve thumbed through the pages of Four Wheeler over the last two to three decades, then you’ve surely seen a Dana 60 front axle hanging under numerous feature and project vehicles. Dana 60s have larger bearings and gears, bigger axleshafts, heftier axlehousings, and all-around stronger components than their ½-ton axle counterparts. These stronger bits are better able to manage the leverage that oversized tires can put on an axle assembly both on- and off-road. Dana 60 1-ton front axles initially found themselves swapped into the front of show and mud trucks rolling on 40- to 44-inch rubber. This was an easy swap for some since a…

Josiah Backus’ first car was a ’90 Honda Integra. That’s not the way a feature story about a superbly designed and built custom four-wheel-drive truck like this ’09 Chevrolet Colorado LT rockcrawler typically begins, but in this case, it makes all the sense in the world. Josiah has always loved making big power out of little engines, and he has honed that craft to a razor-sharp edge over the last dozen or so years. The off-road bug bit Josiah early on, and a handful of off-road trucks powered by Honda engines of one sort or another have led to this most recent creation. When we photographed Josiah’s Colorado in the California desert, the truck was still a work in progress. The Honda K20A2 i-VTEC 2.0L four-cylinder engine had been nestled into…