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I was toying with the idea of grafting on some free wheeling hubs to the front wheels of my 83 wagon (So i can have either fwd, rwd or 4wd) but I am unsure how I would go about doing this and is it even possible as I am not quite sure how these sort of hubs work. Any ideas?

Dunno if it'd work, but don't let me be the one to shoot you down!

First off, you'd need to know how a free-wheeling hub works, then you'd have to have some (or someone) with some serious machining skills or be able to create new parts to do it...

Personally I don't see the point - yes the front wheel drive can be a PITA, but you live with that for having an awesome 4wd, how many 4wd's do you know that can engage 4wd "on the fly"? You'd be better off working out how to fit front and rear diff locks, that would be an awesome mod!

Cheers

Bennie

The smart mod would be to fit freewheeling hubs to the rear wheels and then you could weld your rear diff and use the locking hubs rather than having to remove and replace a drive shaft. It is an interesting one to explore.

it wood not be that hard to do as u only need to have one fit freewheeling hub on the back that way u can weld the diff up .
u can make a dog clach on the drive shaft .

I havn't heard of anyone doing it but hey, sounds like a great idea....

If you want, I have some stuff that might be suitable to play around with. The Datsun 720 ute I just picked up has two free-wheeling hubs on the front which are connected via driveshafts to the R180 front diff (almost exactly the same as a suby diff).
You are welcome to buy em off me . It seems like a good place to start cause the gear is very similar to Subaru stuff.

I though that in order to have free wheeling hubs the actual wheels hub had to be a fully floating design .
I think from memory 720's have upper and lower wishbones and an upright assembly to support the front hubs and bearings . It would be interesting to compare but pure luck it anything interchanged .
Serious off roaders need something a bit beefier than McPherson struts because three point location into the body shell is rarely enough .
Subaru actually used Nissan's diff which goes as far back as K's and Zed's in the late 60's if not further .

A .

phillatdarwin wrote:it wood not be that hard to do as u only need to have one fit freewheeling hub on the back that way u can weld the diff up .
u can make a dog clach on the drive shaft .

The advantage of doing both wheels would be that you would then not have the wheels driving the diff which would maybe help with ecconomy and wear. The issue I see with a suby is that the offset of the wheels would mean that the frewheel mech would stick out a fair way. What would be cool though is you could potentially use a high lift jack adaptor on them which would solve the problem of there not really being anywhere to use a high lift on a suby at the back unless you have a custom bar.