Shawn's World

From reading the various forums it became obvious the the stock axles were not going to handle the extra power of my recently installed Kenne Bell Super Charger. This is especially true since I use drag radial at the race track which provide much more traction than standard radials. The Challenger has different size axle from left to right apparently to help prevent wheel hop (not nearly enough as this is very bad on this car).

I decided to go with the Drive Shaft Shop 1000HP axles. To construct these axles, DSS takes the stock axles and replaces the main axle section with their own chromoly axles, keeping the stock CV joints. They also offer a 1400HP axle that uses their own CV joints as well but this did not come with the ABS tone rings and I was a little worried about taking these off the original axles. This part can not be purchased separately.

The installed seemed quite straight forward. You simply remove the tire, brake calipers and disk, remove all control arms to the knuckle joint, pull the knuckle out far enough to remove the drive shaft. The problem I had was I could not get the knuckle off the lower control arm. The service manual says you need a special tool that allows you to pull a sleeve out of the knuckle/control arm link. I did not have this tool but have read that is was not really required. Well I could not figure out how to make this work so went to plan b.

I decided to remove the entire lower control arm off the car, first by removing the shock, pulling the spring, and then removing the control arm bolt that connects the control arm to the under carriage. Luckily I had shorter Eibach springs from my lowering project so they came out pretty easy. I was now able to pull the knuckle far enough out to slide the drive shaft out of the knuckle. It was then a simple matter of yanking the drive shaft out of the Getrag Differential.

The driver side axle is shorter than the passenger side so care must be taken during the reinstall. The parts went back in in reverse order and all bolts torqued to spec. A quick test drive confirmed that there was no vibration or noise. I tried to flex the suspension over seed bumps to make sure there was no binding during suspension deflection.

The DSS axles are the same diameter for both the driver and passenger side. They are also smaller in diameter than the stock Dodge axles so I am a little surprised that they are stronger. But its all in the composition of the steel used. I will soon find out if they will hold up at the track.