So, Toasty talked me into it, he has been trying for a year or more. I welded up my rear d44.

I did it just how he told me. I welded the spider gears together and then put plate steel in the middle section of all the spider gears and welded them to the plate. Nice and solid. Plated both sides. He said dont welded to the carried because welding to cast steel can cause cracks and weak points.

Some things I would like to point out to others who are going to attempt this later:

1. Make sure you clean really well before hand. I did and it showed.

2. Make sure you clean really well after you get done welding. Its a good idea to get as much slag out as you can. (you spend a long time cleaning before you weld, a couple minutes welding and then a ton of time cleaning after you weld!)

3. When you drain your gear oil into a oil pan and then leave the same oil pan under the axle to catch the three cans of brake clean you use to clean out the axle, make sure you remove it before you start welding. This is the one thing I didn't do correctly. Brake clean catches fire fast and then the oil keeps burning. Bad! Oh and water wont put that fire out. I ended up just smothering the fire. I was successful in dragging the fire out from under my jeep though!

All in all....it has so far not been a great street upgrade. We will see tomorrow how it does offroad!