I'd like to first admit that I am hard on my Jeep. But I also expect it to handle it because I'm a realist and am not going to change my driving style (I tried and failed miserably). I know most will say it's me and my fault and that it's a Jeep not a race car, but here it goes...
I first broke my factory D35 with trac-loc on the street about 6 months ago. I did a hard launch from a roll to pass an Idiot Out Wondering Around. I broke teeth off the spider gears and the ring gear didn't look good either. I upgraded to an 8.8 becuase I wanted this not to happen again and the largest tire I'm going to run is 35's.
Well I just trashed my 8.8. Spider gears are are toothless, cracked the case, and ring gear is scorched (?). You guessed it, from doing a hard launch on pavement. I had just put on my 35's (Thank you Larry) and was "testing" them.
I already planned to re-gear and put a tru-trac up front, now it looks like I'm also putting a tru-trac in the rear. But the question is: Am I going to have strength issues again? I upgraded to an 8.8 thinking that it would handle my abuse, but am asking too much? I know that on the street it'll be tougher on it but will it hold up under moderate to possible heavy off-road abuse? Could it be possible that I just had bad luck and replacing everything inside should make it strong enough for me? Any comments appreciatative, even the obvious ones.
