what are some of the pros and cons of going fullwidth vs. swaping a toyota 8". i have a D44 from a blazer and i can get a ford nine from my friend. this is still my DD. i dont want to start buying parts for the D44 and end finding out that its not worht it. anyone here wish that when they were doing an sas that should have just gone full width or is there anyone that has swapped in full width axles and wishes they would have stayed with toyota axles.

thanks

The con of throwing a wider axle on is somehow making it street legal using mud flaps some states require your tire not to go out from the wheel wells so you would have to have some huge flares on it.
Also another con is some forest trails or tight rocky trails are not really that wide that's why blazers and big trucks can't go through them so having wider axles won't help ya sometimes.
I think wider axles would be more suited for a trail only rig.

The pro is Alot of guys use them on rock crawling rigs because it is way more stable as long as you keep your CG low you can still roll them though given the right conditions.

The pro is it is wider. More stable. Can turn big tires tighter without hitting frame.
The con is it is wider. Sticks out and takes more room on the trail.
Choose what you like.

does anyone know what the law is for having the tires past the fenders in AZ. i havnt heard anyone talk about it being a problem in az.

Many state motor vehicle departments have the state vehicle code on-line, see if you can access it and find out.

I personally would never do it as alot of the trails I run it would be too wide. One of the reasons for having a Toyota in my mind is how narrow they are.

well the reason why i was thinking about it was for the roll over factor. plus the axle was free.

thanks

Fullwidth axles were all the rage a few years ago but seem to be less so now. Most guys who drives their rigs on the street don't want hassles from the law, and most trail only rigs are showing up in competitions, where narrowly spaced cones make wide axles a liability.

I think that they make sense on something like a Samurai or flatfender with a really short wheelbase, but with the wheelbase of a Toyota stability shouldn't be that big of an issue on most trails.

Also consider that your "free" axles will likely not be so cheap once you have them installed under your truck. The passenger side spring pad is cast into the center section of the housing and must stay in the same place, but Chevys used wider spring centers than Toyotas since the frames were wider. You "could" just weld on the driver side pad in the right spot, but then the driver side of the axle would stick out 4 inches further than the passenger side. The best way to deal with this is to narrow the housing and axle shaft, which is not necessarily cheap or easy.