The Dana 44 with Dana 35 tubes and Dana 35 outers didnt exist, Dana had to modify both the Dana 35 and Dana 44 to make it work. So I would say it was a, "new item," that requried designinh and modifying.
I would agree with you if they used a 100% Dana 44, but for some reason they retained Dana 35 parts which is very odd to me.
Not trying to fight, just talking theory.
This discussion centers around the position that the Dana 35 is problematic. If anyone is a designer and or product developer, they would be ecstatic to come up with a product as successful as the Dana 35. It was used in the early YJ and continued until at least the end of the TJ and was also under the ZJ and XJ. That is over a million units.
When I first got on the internet, I saw all the grief about the 35 and how much of a shit product it was and you were a second class citizen if you owned one. I have a friend who worked at several Jeep dealerships as a mechanic over the years on the line who installed the factory lift kits as well as the rest of the stuff a mechanic does. I was chatting with him one day showing off my new found knowledge about Jeeps and Dana 35's, I mentioned that it must suck having to repair them all the time. He told me that they almost never worked on them for anything except a customer pay gear swap. I was astounded at this and started digging into it. The more I dug, the more clear it became that the much maligned Dana 35 reputation is due to an exceptionally vocal and exceptionally small minority of Jeep owners.
The Jeep engineers also know the same, they aren't stupid and there is or was a fairly large contingent of them who own Jeeps and go wheeling. It isn't hard to figure they wanted something under the Rubi that the public who would generally talk about the product would recognize as being good, so they chose the venerable 44. That is further evidenced by the fact that when they built the rear axle under the JK Rubi, they called it a 44 even though it has almost nothing in common with one.
There is also reference to the TJ front and rear 44's being fake. The problem with that is there is no such thing as a fake TJ 44. There are many different versions of them, all spec'd differently, all for different applications. The closest thing to a fake 44 is the one under the back of the JK since it doesn't use a 44 gear set or the common 30 spline shafts.
The main reason for them front and rear is development cost. Essentially the same locker, same locker pump, same gear set and bang for the buck. "Dana 44's Front and Rear" has a lot more pizazz than anything else that potential Jeep buyers would recognize. That and the front 44 under a Jeep was nothing new in the Rubi. The South American XJ has a HP version of it that is nearly identical in all aspects with the exception of no locker and it is HP.
Folks don't care about the rest. I posit that premise based on the fact that Currie's #1 all time selling front axle is their HP Dana 60 with TJ outers. I consider that to be probably one of the dumbest products you can sling under a TJ and like the 35, it is phenomenally successful. Why is it successful? Because there are so many broken front gear sets or because folks want to tell everyone they have a Dana 60 under their rig? Also, since we might struggle with real and fake again, is it a fake 60 or a real 60?
I'm not aware of any TJ Dana 44's with Dana 35 outers front or rear.
