Front Drive Unit Swap (M190 to M210) - In Depth DIY Video

[Dusty]

Nicely done series of videos, thanks for posting! Now that you've put it to some use any regrets not going lower than the 5.13s?

I pondered that gear choice for months before I settled on it. Tricky Mike and a few others here don't agree but I think it's the perfect gear ratio for the rest of my drivetrain combo and my use case. To me, it's not a competition of how slow the thing can crawl and whether you can hop out and walk along side it while your friends drink beers and high five you at Super Cel. For me it boils down to what is actually useful on the trail. And so far the real world experience has borne out my hypotheses from playing with the gear calculator for hours and weighing it against my considerable amount of wheeling time in this Bronco with it's stock drivetrain and various tire sizes.

The bottom line is that in Crawl gear in 4-Low on 37's in its current configuration, it can pull itself up any incline if it can find the traction. Sure, you still have to bump it up a ledge here and there. But even if the tire was turning slightly slower, it would still just turn without climbing the obstacle. It's not a moon buggy or cone-dodger, but we've had it in as technical of rock crawling situations as we care to put it so far, on trails from Utah to Southern California, and not once since the axle swap have I wished I had just a bit more gearing.

The other end of the driving spectrum is also important. I wanted to make sure 6th gear was usable, not lugging but not winding out at highway cruising speed. I daily commute this thing and we take a lot of road trips, and I like to drive around 75-80. The engine seems happy. Had I done 5.38, my final drive ratio would have been about the same as this Bronco was when I drove it out of the dealer on 30" tires and 4.46 gears. I remember it being slightly too low geared for my taste at that time. These 5.13's have hit the sweet spot in my opinion.

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[Roofus]

What if you never break the axle? You might be surprised if you wheel with some mechanical empathy on 35's or less how far an open M190 might take you. I wish I could get 4.27 gears for the M210, because then I would only have to screw with one axle.

Then that would save me a lot of money!

I’m on 35’s. We’ve definitely put it through the paces. I mean, east coast stuff isn’t near the rock crawling some of you are doing out west. But we’ve pretty much tackled every major trail in VA, 4 days on on the Allegheny Discovery Route, the dunes at OBX, two river crossings, yada yada yada and it’s been totally fine. I imagine the hardest test will be when we head to Vermont in October for The Pilgrimage. I’d love to upgrade to 37’s at some point, but sounds like that may be risky.