Hello everyone, I will try to make this short, I have a 2012 jku rubi with a bunch of mods like armor, lift shocks, frnt drive shaft, on 37" BFG km2's and now its time to get some new chromoly shafts. I would like to try to spend around $1500 or so. I was thinking of getting ten factory front and rear shafts and maybe the teraflex hd hinge too, or get rcv front shafts and whatever brand rear shafts, AMD get the hinge later. I would like to here some pros/cons about rcv's or standard u-joint chromos( like how do the little 760spicer joints hold up) I need you opinions please, I plan ob pulling the trigger in a day or so on some shafts. Thank you
Personally, I wouldn't bother changing out your rear shafts until you need to. The factory shafts will hold there own and aside from issues you might see with bent flanges, I really haven't seen to many break, even running 37's. And, for that matter, I've seen plenty of chromo shafts suffer from bent flanges too.
Regarding front shafts, there really is no need to get anything more than a set of standard chromoly shafts SO LONG AS it comes with full circle clips or, have yoke ears that will allow you to install your own. The most common failure on front axle shafts come from the fact that they use C-clips and, over time, they can work themselves free. Once that happens, there's nothing preventing your bearing caps from falling off and causing a total failure. Full circle clips will prevent this from happening. I've run RCV's and they are nice but, I just don't know if they're worth the significant additional cost. Also, I personally don't like the idea of having a joint that is so strong that any break you would have would most likely be the shaft itself deep in the axle housing or, a ring and pinion. If you've ever had to deal with either of those on the trail, you'd know why it's a concern of mine. You should also know that JK chromo shafts DO NOT use 760 joints, they use the much larger factory ones.
Of course, this is all just my 2¢