Our motto was "wheel it on Sunday, drive it to work on Monday...". Not because you had to (not that was a problem), but you were "good enough" you could! I wheeled a 6 spd FJ and broke twice in 10 years. 1 was an aftermarket CV, the other was a ring and pinon at 4 years and 11 months on a warranty on 35's in some rough shit. It was taken care of by the vendor and sold to another years later with no further issues.
The torque applied by the loose nut behind the wheel IS the deciding factor!
3 times a year i take a 3hr 90mph road trip to silver lake, and then proceed to send it for 4-8hrs over 2-3 days and then do 100mph most of the way home.. trucks been good to me for 60K+mi, so i just chalked the diff thing to being cheap in the engineering dept.. some extra gussets in the AL housing would help, but the bean counters are not..
thats really interesting. Does the ford diff cover claim to increase rigidity of the front diff housing? I read through your thread and had to laugh that people were recommending to JB weld or TIG + JB...
Im going to buy a spare housing to take apart and see if I can learn anything
if anything, it will hopefully give more support than the stamped steel cover, but also adds a drain plug.. theres studs to preload the carrier bearing main bearing caps, so hopefully make it solid, but the coast ramp thing is real and the cheap aluminum housing is too..
its for a mustang 8.8 diff, and bolts right on, other than the mods to make it fit past the steering rack.. look at the ARB or some of the other ones that dont have a huge gusset/brace on the left/driver side