front half shaft interchange question

[thetowtruckguy]

ok so I apologize im sure this has bin asked before but I was not able to find a thread that mentioned it so I have an 88 ford ranger 2.9 4x4 iv had problems with the front half shafts breaking or the caps to the u-joint coming out when wheeling I have bin told tack welding the u-joints in will fix that so I did that so far so good but I have talked to some people who say the half shafts out of the ford explorers are heavier duty and they interchange then im told when they went to the 3.0 they were heavier duty and interchange but then I talk to someone else about it and they say they don't I like the fact that tack welding them worked but I want the u-joints to be my weak point so I don't break nothing major im afraid in doing this it my take some of the give away and break something more $$$ I know my 88 has the smaller half shafts and before i welded them i would break one every time i went wheeling and they are getting harder and harder to find am i able to go to the bigger ones out of the early 90's if so do they switch right over or do i need more then just the half shafts and if so what? thank you and once again i apologize if this has bin brought up before i had no luck finding the answers i am looking for

 

[scotts90ranger]

You can't just swap the shafts as the spline count and diameter of the shafts is larger, but if you get a Dana 35 front axle out of an early Explorer (91-94) or a '90-97 Ranger and swap the whole front axle in, the only modification to anything else would be to shorten your front driveshaft by about an inch (the other option is to swap to the transfer case from one of the above vehicles with the driveshaft that came with it, that's what I did)

With that setup, and some other certain mods, the front hubs end up being the fuse which as you know is an easy swap...