Dana 44 Crossover Steering System for '67-87 (up to '91 square body) GM trucks.
The straight axle GM trucks suffer from some serious steering problems, one of the biggest is due to poor geometry. The factory GM steering will fail to steer the truck when you're in twisted offroad situations, in fact, there are many times when the steering box is all the way to lock and the tires are pointed straight! Our solution to this is a "crossover steering" system where the draglink runs side to side instead of front to back. This dramatically improves the steering geometry and makes turning to the axle stops possible under all conditions.
The Dana 44 and GM Corporate 10 bolt crossover steering arm bolts to the top of the knuckle on the right hand side of the axle, just like the factory 4wd steering arm bolts to the top of the left hand knuckle. The problem is, none of the right side knuckles are machined for this steering arm. The right side knuckle must also have a large cast-in flat surface on the top of the knuckle to be machined for the crossover steering kit. This "flat top" knuckle is commonly found on '76 and older D44 axles. ALL GM corp 10 bolts and most '77-up D44's will need the knuckles from an older D44 in order to complete the crossover steering, or one of the brand new beefy Reid Racing pieces below. The "flat top" and "round top" knuckles are shown below to illustrate the difference: The flat top knuckle you need is on the right.
And if you don't have good OE knuckles, check out our ultra-beef Reid Racing/Dedenbear knuckles.
Note that the tie rod arms on a Chevy Dana 44 are tapered from the top with the nut on the bottom while the 10 bolts and '77 and later Chevy Dana 44's are the opposite, if you're finding the older flat top knuckles, you'll need to swap both onto your axle.
If you're getting a Reid Racing knuckle from us, you can buy just the passenger side and we'll supply it to match your OE driver's side knuckle.
The knuckles will interchange with many Dana applications, even in Jeep, Ford or Dodge, but keep in mind the tie rod arms and other seemingly minor details could make a big difference when you try to bolt it all together.
Also be aware that drum brake steering knuckles have a rotated spindle hole pattern and will not work with the crossover steering without modification. This caught one customer totally by surprise when he tried to bolt the kit together.
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