I was wandering if anyone ever run a welded posi rear on a 8.8? I was given a set of welded gears from a guy who is running them now on his 94 F150 and also he runs them in his sand drag truck with 500hp+ He says he's never had a problem other than the cops bothering him about the squeeling around corners, has anyone ever attempted this on a street truck?

 

I would'nt use them on any kind of pavement. Definetly off-road use only. You'd be chewing up tires and beating up your 8.8 rear. On pavement they are only good for dry weather, straight line performance.

My $.02

 

I run a welded 7.5" in my Ranger which is very similar to your 8.8 just smaller. I run a welded front and rear in that truck. Honestly I couldn't feel much of a difference between driving it open and welded on the street. I figured it would be very harsh, but its not. I actually had to DD the truck for 2 weeks while my F150 was getting fixed. I have yet to break anything in the 7.5. Before it was welded it was flat towed from Vinita, OK to Ames, IA and then driven from Ames to Cedar Rapids, IA. All of this time what gear oil was in the rear was the consistancy of cake mix. All of this managed to eat my cross pin most of the way through and made alot of play in the carrier bearing. The cross pin was wedged so bad that I couldn't get it out. Everything was then welded and the thing is solid as a rock. It has taken some hard abuse offroad and about 2000 miles of street driving and its still as good as the day it was welded. Now in wet or icy conditions its gonig to suck so you need to keep that in mind, but for a vehicle that sees alot of trail duty I'd do it. I'm happy enough with mine that I'm going to weld my D44 instead of using a locker.

 

I work in the woods as a heavy equipment operator and I'd love to have that extra traction when I am traveling in and out the trails, on numerous occasions I've met log trucks and had to squeeze over in the ditch in order to let them by me, and there is nothing worse than having to get out and lock in the manual hubs just to pull out of a ditch that is 12" deep because one wheel is spinning, I think I'll try it, 8.8s are pretty plentiful rear around here, so if a problem does occur it should be easy enough to replace, and as far as tires go I'm not too worried, they usually get chewed off pre-maturally anyway with my heavy foot.