I have a 87 dodge raider, it has 33/1250's on it. I just bought it a couple months ago and just a couple days ago I got it runing. All I have drove it was around in the yard. When you take a little weight off the rear wheels when its flexing it just spins one wheel. And when I put in 4wd and flex the least bit one wheel one the front and one on the rear will spin. I have looked for lockers and can't find anything for my raider. And not only that but they are really really F'n hight. I am very caple of doing it. Its not really the welding part as much as its axle breaking part. I do plan on driving it on the road, and I am worried because of the 33's.is this something I need to worry about?

won't be too good going around corners on hard surfaces. Did you check http://www.car-part.com for an LSD?

If'n you want to do it right, I recommend you keep an eye out in the junkyards for a Montero Sport with leaf springs, disc brake, and an air locker in it factory. With this, it will BOLT onto the truck with no problems. You will go from an 8" to a 9" rearend. Youbwill have disc brakes instead of drums, much better with the bigger tires, and the ability to lock and unlock the rear at the push of a button. The parking brake cables bolt up, you just need to criss cross them. The biggest issue is driveshaft/u-joint. It is bigger on the Sport rear axle. So two ways two handle that. 1. There is enough space on the Sport flange to drill it and bolt up your smaller stock rear u-joint or 2. Get the larger Sport u-joint assy put onto the stock driveshaft. And while you are getting the rear axle out of the Sport, grab the front brakes; rotors, calipers, brake hoses, backing plates. With a little modification to the backing plates, you will upgrade to a lot bigger front discs.

Well even the weakest of Montero Axles are stronger than most other 4x4's axles. PA_JERO ran welded diffs on road and rock crawled 35" tires with crawler gears and didn't actually start breaking front axles until we made the front flex way beyond it's factory geometry. If you leave the IFS stock (T bar crank is fine) you won't have breakage issues even in the harshest service. Way back before anyone had done Gen 2 IFS swaps we went crazy with Gen 2 UCAs with a balljoint flip <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />
Yeah the flex was crazy but the tierods broke like they were made of glass, so in short you'll be fine just ask here before you go modifying and we'll keep you on the right track.

As for locker availability you can buy a Montero Sport rear axle with an air locker and possibly disc brakes for a couple hundred bucks and it's almost a bolt in swap. Those axles come in two flavors 9" 28 spline and 9.5" 31 spline. the next most easiest thing is buying those same axles from a Montero SR except they will require you to cut off the supension brackets and weld on spring perches but these axles are easier to find and all of them have disc brakes.

In the front you can swap in the Starion LSD or the V6 Montero front axle giving you options of the bigger Starion LSD, the cheapie guy Aussie locker or the Awesome ARB air locker.

One more thing get 35's <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Mudraider, JINX!

And in answer to your actual question. Yes welding it may cause it to break. Course that will all be dependent on the turns you make, amount of grip you have at any particular time, etc. Personally if it was me, I'd weld that and be on the lookout for the Sport axle. I would weld the front diff also, and get a hold of Phil also known as plh, and order some manual hubs ( manual hubs ) for the front so you can run that locked front axle. This should create quite the firestorm, welding diffs is not taken lightly in this forum. You seem to have one of the rare non-LSD equipped Gen 1 SWB, as I have not seen one yet. We have two in JY's around here, both have the LSD.

Here's the sport axle in a Gen 4CYL truck. Remember you're a couple hundred dollars away from a real locker, bigger brakes and a killer axle. If you had a Jeep or Toyota you'd be looking at over 1k assuming you got a "good" deal at the salvage yards

Toasty, is that springs you did for the parking brake cable? I did that, but never mentioned it, seemed like a redneck fix. Been trying to order some for a SWB from across the pond. Guess I'll keep that. But like Toasty said, that SPORT locker is worth it's weight to put in there. On-demand locker, huge disc brakes....one of the best upgrades you can bolt in I believe.

I eventually plan to do a front and rear axle swap. And probably an engine swap. But no time soon. And there is only one junkyard around here that has one 89,v6 raider in it. I don't know if the axles in it will fit mine. So if I break one of mine I don't have a lot of options on where to go from there. I use to be a novice offroader years ogo but I had a 79 f250. A lot different than what I have now. I have now idea how strong the axels are in my raider or how good my ifs is and how much it can take.

They are way over built. The factory did a great job with the drivetrain, except for the 2.6 and it's VSS issue Good power for the weight. My eldest has one of mine and runs the piss out of it, after I ran the piss out of it. Strong motors. Axle swap is going to cost a pretty penny unless you find a really good deal on something already geared at 4.10 plus, preferably 4.56 or higher. factory gearing is a pretty steep 4.62, you will be hard pressed to find axles geared sufficiently at a reasonable price to beat what you have.