[ohboy321]

Originally Posted by 57taskforce

70 is a one year only axle with an open knuckle setup and drum brakes, it also uses the same 71+ lock in hubs with red dials.

My K10 is based on a 70 chassis and has open knuckles with drum brakes. I looked into the details of going to disk brakes and posted this in a thread a couple of years ago....

Originally Posted by ohboy321

I also have a K10 with a 70 drum brake axle. I had looked into what was needed to do the conversion and found that 70 and 71 axle shafts were shorter and had smaller u-joints than 72 and up D44 axles, so for my truck I would need parts from 71 to do the change over to disks.

Here is a link to the Spicer Dana axle data: http://docslide.us/documents/spicer-dana.html

I used it to reference the parts differences between years of manufacture. If I decide to do it I will look for an axle out of a 72-78 and swap the entire thing so I get the beefier shafts, disks, and still be able to run with a D44.

This site here also had some good research info: http://d44tech.com/index.html

As davischevy mentioned, there are other threads discussing the subject that can also be helpful.

Since I posted that I have gone through the entire drum brake system and with stock height tires it stops pretty well. Disk brakes would still be nice, and if I stumble across either the parts to upgrade what I have or a donor axle I would move that up on the list of things to do.

Steve