Spare axle storage in an XJ

After watching several fellow Jeepers break axle shafts in their Dana 30 front ends and having broken two myself I like to carry spares and the tools to swap them out. I think our record time for swapping an axle shaft on the trail is 14 minutes.

However, I have had trouble finding a good place to store the spares. They are heavy and tend to bang around if not secured. They would be a severe hazard if unsecured in a roll over.

I found both short and long shafts will fin inside a length of 4” PVC pipe that can lie cross wise in the rear floor up against the roll cage main hoop in my Cherokee. I don’t have a back seat in mine.

To make the storage pipe, I bought a 10 foot length of PVC sewer pipe. It is about half the price of regular PVC pipe. I also got two caps. The caps for sewer pipe are about a third the cost of pressure caps.

I cut the pipe with a hand saw just long enough to accommodate the two axles overlapped in the tube. It just barely fits between the sides of the XJ. I did not make a separate hold down bracket as I sat the spare tire on top of the tube and secured the tire with two ratchet straps. I don’t think it is going anywhere.

I then used the rest of the pipe to make a sleeve to keep my HI Lift, and axe together. For about $15 I have cleaned up the storage area of my Jeep and hopefully reduced the things that could hit me in the head in an incident.