Ford 8.8 goodness started!

[swan song]

I finally got my darn axle back. Note to self- when an ancient old guy tells you "I can't get to it for awhile" ask him exactly how long that entails, if he does not hold up his end of the finish date (or at least a start date) take your axle back and tell him "thanks for the waste" /rant.

Took the 8.8 to my buddy Darrick's. He's a pro welder. Does all sorts of neat art around town.


We started by tearing the axle down. Removing the brake drums and the axles.



Now is a good time to replace ALL brake hardware and bearing and seals.

 You may notice I'm not going into any details on how to do some of this. Two reasons why: 1) it is extremely well documented over and over again on various explorer and ranger and mustang websites 2) I followed directions, so can you. If you feel this is beyond your abilities, pay a shop...

Next, we began grinding off all brackets.




We had to break out the big angle grinder to make quick work of the brackets. This was some serious Detroit steel!


I didn't get any pics after this, but next, we cut off 2 7/8" out of the long side axle tube, then jigged up the angle iron and slid the cut end into it and welded the axle back together. We slid the two short axles back in and verified everything fit and had no rubbing or drag.
a comparison of the two short passenger side axles and the drivers side long one.

Here's EXACTLY what we did: http://www.thefabricatorseries.com/build-blogs/how-to-narrow-a-ford-explorer-88-rear-axle-part-1-prelude-and-qa
There are a few other write ups out there for this procedure, this guy seemed to be more precise. The other two I looked at were done by some Chevy s10 hillbilly in his backyard. He didn't seem to care much about precision. Believe me, it's gotta be precise or you will destroy bearings, axles, and tubes and worse- lsd's.

Stay tuned. Stage two is coming. Removing brackets from the Celica, and welding them into the ford.

[AkiRA65]

NICE!!!! Hopefully I'll be getting somewhere similar in the next few months.

[sirdan]

Good shit, the pics with sparks flying are enough detail for me.

[Northern Redneck]

nice looking forward to the finished product, are you going to the five lug setup?

[swan song]

nice looking forward to the finished product, are you going to the five lug setup?

I'm still undecided. I would love to. But finding good condition rims for cheap and are stylish and are 15" are difficult. Not a whole lot out there in my area. Plus if I buy rims im only buying to upsize. Which means more money spent on tires. And that's getting out of my budget. I can always go back to the five lug. But right now my machinist will redrill axles for cheap. So I'm sticking with my Datsun Zx rims.

Side note- it's safer to redrill my axles on the rear, than to get hub adapters for the front. Hub adapters CAN be risky. I've heard so many mixed reports. You never see them on track cars. Id rather not be the guy that finds out the hard way. And no, I don't want to go through the ridiculous parts scrounging and bracket making for the five lug front.

[sirdan]

Id have the axles redrilled and welded. should be plenty safe. Spacers idk i see mixed opinions, the main downside  I see is the adapter ones are at least an inch and a half thick. so your rims would stick out another inch and a half each side and probably rub.

[swan song]

Well that wouldn't be an issue. Cut and flare. But then I'd have to do the rears to match.

[AkiRA65]

Or you could s13 suspension with se 5 lug hubs and z32 brakes 

[swan song]

Lol. See above post man.

[swan song]

Update. No machinists in my area is willing to redrill the axles. Looks like I'm sticking with mismatched rims. Now I gotta find a Set of 5x4.5 that'll fit.

[AkiRA65]

  jc Whitney axles

[sirdan]

It might not be too hard to weld and redrill them yourself. I mean you can use one of the existing studs already so your 1/3 of the way there. You could make a jig off you front hubs. Its doable it would just take some of time and some careful thinking. Probably wouldn't cost much at all if you could scrounge the stuff to make the jig. The nice thing about making a jig is you could drill them out for other people and charge them 80 bucks or so.   

[swan song]

jc Whitney axles

  expensive.
If I do this right I'll be into the axle 50$ the spare short side 10$ and the new 5x4.5 (which I just bought) for 60$. New brakes 125$ (that's everything for the brakes) and new fluids 25$. That's a beefy ass rear end that I can spank daily with a capable LSD for ~260$~ eff yeah.

[swan song]

"Something is afoot at the Circle K!"


Over the weekend we got the axle suspension mounts done. It's vitally important to measure your pinion angle using a magnetic angle finder. I bought mine for 12$ at Home Depot. My pinion angle was a "most excellent" 90 degrees. This simplified a lot. It also meant some of my mounts were 90°  Like the shock mount studs, panhard and even the flat section of the spring perches! But my car is lowered an inch. So check YOUR pinion angle on YOUR Celica before embarking down the path of "most choice" axle-age. Now all I have left is the brake lines and brake rebuild. Then parking brake stuff.

A not on that- some ppl will tell you to cut the ends of your exploder lines and reflare them to a metric end. That's the dumb hard way of doing things. All you need is two adapters from Napa (weather head 1443) cost? About 3$. Goes Celica metric to ford 3/8". Ultra simple. Now you can just get lines for the ford and adapt them to the Celica brake "T". Can't dumb it down more than that.

A couple of issues to resolve are: the panhard bar rubs on the diff cover. I plan on solving that with an angle grinder (it's not much). The factory sway bar is SOOO close to fitting, extending the bracket out an inch or two should resolve that.

Enough boring, on to the pics!








Mmm dat poke...


Keep in mind those rear rims are from a danger ranger and the tires are 195/75/14's so the car has a bit of rake to it. Unbelievably, it doesn't rub! I can bounce my 220lb ass off the rear bumper with no rubs!

[swan song]

Pics of the mounting process.

This is the angle finder on the companion flange of the diff snout. 90°'s on the dot!


Torching brackets off makes it easy.


"Wimpy wimpy wimpy!" "Hefty hefty hefty!"


Old brackets, new axle.


Notice how the spring perch goes OVER the other bracket.

Oh and my old Celica axle is up for grabs. Pm me. Don't clutter this thread.