Hello. Long story short my 1994 XJ has had a heavy grinding noise coming from the rear for a awhile and I've been putting off fixing it. After careful thought I have decided to simply swap out the entire rear (Including brakes, drums etc) and bypass taking things apart. Anyway..I have narrowed it down to 2-3 newer XJs in the local salvage yard. My question is how can I make sure the rear I am getting matches mine and my transfer case from number or tags on them? All the XJs I picked have 8.25" rears and they all LOOK like the same as mine but I'm sure the difference is internal. Any help in locating and reading the tags/stamps etc will be helpful. I know there's a round metal tag with red writing on the transfer case. Thank you.

 

You can swap in pretty much any one, almost all autos are 3.55 ratio. If yours is a d35 now, make sure you grab the rear driveshaft as well (the 8.25 has a bigger snout, therefore you d/s is a different length). The t-case should be either a 231 part time or a 242 ft/pt. These # will be on the round id tag on the backside.
Good luck!

 

So if I have a 8.25" rear and a 242 transfer case I should get a rear from an XJ that also has a 242 case only? I'm making sure because I read something about a problem going into 4x4 if things were geared wrong. Thanks for any info/links.