Not allways. Many dual rear axles have a pass thru shaft on the front rear diff. Heck, sometimes the pass thru shaft goes thru both rear axles. Heck you want to talk about cool, look at the M38 Jeep diffs. Independant suspension, 4 wheel drive with pass thru shafts on both diffs. Adding a second rear axle was realy easy. Or, you could add a drive axle to your trailer. It had a bad habit of tipping over under power. And I hear they didn't back up worth a damn.

Hey Curtis,
Just wait for a spreader to fall over into a gully, haul it out with a D8 Cat and spend years fitting a trooper body? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />
Those spreader carry 4 or 5 ton on the back and they go some stupid places.

Peter H

I had a friend that an early 4x4 LUV, and it had a solid front axle. As far as I know it was not a conversion, as I recall it had AISIN hubs. I don't know what the exact year was. The truck was sold long ago. He had this truck in the late 70's. I really don't know when GM started importing the LUVs, but I konw this one was an early model. I remeber that both the front and rear axles had removable third members. I really don't remember too much more except that he had Corvette drive-train in the form of a 350HP 327 and a Borg-Warner T10 with a divorced 205 tcase. It was a very squirrelly truck with a backend that always wanted to pass the front <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/notooth.gif" alt="" /> His homemade lift shackles didn't exactly contribute to stability either. All in all it was a fun truck, but it did spend a bit of time on it's side <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" /> now and then, largely due to it's propensity for end swapping. In all my travels I have never seen another solid axle LUV, so maybe it was a conversion??

i dunno for sure, not to knowledgable, but i think the luvs from the early-mid 70's were all 2 wheel drive. already had the corvette stuff converted in. and the divorced case also seems to point to conv. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I know the engine and tranny were not stock, he swapped those in. But as far as I know the springs and axles were already on the truck. These guys were pretty prone to swaps, they had a '59 Chevy Apache with running gear from a '79 Ford 1/2 ton, right down to the 300 inline six. If someone told these guys it couldn't be done, that was all the more reason to do it. But like I said, the axles were on the truck when he got it. I cannot say that the previous owner did not swap the axles, but they were there when he got it. I did a little searching and could not find anything to comfirm whether or not it could have had them stock.
The jeeps with the pass through diffs were actually not Jeeps at all, they were M-151's made by AM General. The M38's were all leaf sprung solid axle rigs and made by Willys or Kaiser. Early models were similar to the CJ3 flat fenders and the later models were the mil spec version of the CJ5 (or rather the CJ is the civvy spec version of the M38).

yeah the m38a1 was/is a sweet little jeep. shackle reversed and 5.38's stock <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

any chance youd have some old pictures you could scan of that luv?

I will have to see if I can find any pics. I could even get in touch with Lonnie (actual owner) and see if he has any pictures. In short, I guess the answer to the original question, there is no easily obtainable Isuzu straight axle, if they ever existed at all. His very well could have been a conversion, but it did have the straight axles when he got it.