Guest Wrench: Liam Tackles a Dana 20 (And Wins, Eventually)

I didn’t turn a single bolt on this one, but I still want to talk about it, because Liam just posted Part 3 of his Commando series and it’s the kind of video that reminds you why we all do this in the first place.

For anyone who hasn’t been following along, Liam runs Jeep Sheep TV, and he’s been slowly bringing his ’72 Jeep Commando back to life in a series he calls “Going Commando.” This installment is all about the Dana 20 transfer case — the thing that sits behind the Turbo 400 and splits power to the front and rear axles. It’s got a solid reputation for durability, even if the low range gearing is nothing to write home about. But after who knows how many years of sitting, this particular unit needed a full teardown before it was going anywhere.

Here’s the thing about transfer case rebuilds: they look straightforward right up until they aren’t. Liam was following a rebuild video from another Jeep guy online, and it got him most of the way there — until he hit a bearing race that simply would not come out. No punch would fit through the hole. No screwdriver would bite the lip. So he did what we’d do — he fabricated his own tool out of a flat piece of steel, eyeballed the edges, ground them down, and got it on the first try. Sometimes the janky, one-off tool is the right tool.

Then there’s the detent spring. The one that’s supposed to come out in one piece. Liam’s came out in four. That’s the kind of moment where you either throw the wrench across the shop or you laugh and go find the part. He found a supplier — Wild Horses Bronco — because it turns out the Dana 20 in a Commando shares plenty of parts with the ones Ford used in old Broncos. That’s a genuinely useful nugget if you’re wrenching on one of these and the Jeep forums are coming up dry: check the Bronco crowd instead.

What I appreciate about this video is that it’s not polished. Liam’s improvising with a crank puller for bearing work, wrestling a needle bearing into place by hand, and at one point just says the quiet part out loud — “don’t be like me, that was a dumb idea” — about reusing an old bearing race as an improvised punch. That’s the whole point of showing your work. Nobody nails a transfer case rebuild clean on the first try, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help the guy at home who’s stuck on the same problem.

By the end, gears are replaced, gaskets are sealed, bolts are torqued to spec, and the case gets cleaned up and painted — which, if you’ve ever done a rebuild like this, you know is its own kind of satisfying. Looks a lot better than it did coming apart.

This one’s Liam’s project start to finish, not a DPV build, but it’s exactly the kind of grind-it-out, figure-it-out content we love pointing people toward. If you’ve got a Dana 20 in your future, go watch the whole series — it’ll save you some headaches we clearly didn’t have the benefit of.

Wheel it, Wreck it, Wrench it, Repeat!