Build Thread 1978 Fairmont. I bet somebody back home’s thinkin’…I wonder why he don’t write..?

Why not just buy another rear instead of d*ckin around with adding 12 to 15 inches just to hack and weld on them ?

Money earned is money saved. You could sell the tires for half the money a used 8.8 rear will cost. If its a mustang rear you could probably recoupe that with the sale of the carrier and axles.
 
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Why not just buy another rear instead of d*ckin around with adding 12 to 15 inches just to hack and weld on them ?

Money earned is money saved. You could sell the tires for half the money a used 8.8 rear will cost. If its a mustang rear you could probably recoupe that with the sale of the carrier and axles.
Here,…allow me to refresh your memory.
Then you’ll remember why that makes even less sense.
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Torque arm. No upper control arm mounts. The DOM tubing (3” od x .250 wall) cost 75 bucks. The rest of the required steel, probably another 75.00. Either way will be a lot of labor and welding, but I’m not gonna rebuild that torque arm saddle that surrounds the center section over again.
 
I’m reading in the old thread last night ( the 620 page old thread). it’s a catch 22, but I really wish i hadn’t decided to have it closed.
One one hand, I was a little less crotchety 8 years ago when this build started, and the stuff I wrote had a lighter feel than the sometimes ( no, often-times) pity party that spews out of me when things don’t go as planned in today’s updates.
There is a lot of humor in the old updates, as that was always part of the plan back then……to make it entertaining to read. And, there was a whole bunch of fabrication in that thread…I redid the hood three different times, the side vents, three different times, the tail light panel, 4 different times…and all through that….not one single tirade from me.

On the other hand, once each update becomes yesterday’s news, it’s gone. And just added to the size of the sprawling book that that old thread had become. Trying to find anything in the past took forever. And despite the fact that I think I‘m funny, not everyone else does.
But,…….Whatever happens to something that gets archived here, it causes it to become really slow to view, so as long as took to go through the 600 pages back then, it takes forever to go through it now,….I guess it’ll just have to be my little secret.
 
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Ever since I went with a 31 spline axle, and converted the rear over to small bearing 9” housing ends installing, and removing the axles, especially the driver side axle has been a bitch. You literally have to beat them in and out with several blows using like a 2.5 lb mallet. In all cases where I’ve had a 9” rear before, that has never been the case. Usually, all I had to do to get the axle out was to put a drum or rotor on the studs after everything else was unfastened, loosely thread a couple of lug nuts on and use the rotor like a slide hammer to pop it loose. Putting it in was simply a matter of lining things up, and giving it a good push, and in it went.

I assumed that the reason the axles fought me so bad when installing them in this case was that I had got them tweaked a little, and because of that, by the time the axle was all the way into the differential, the misaligned axle was preloading the bearing and causing all of this resistance.

So I remove the rear, beat the axles out, and remove the differential in anticipation of redoing the outside of the housing with new ends. Just because it’s me, I decide to see how easy the axle will go into the housing now that there was no differential there to cause it to preload the bearing.

You still have to beat the freakin thing in. It isn’t what I thought it was at all, it’s a too tight bearing clearance between the housing end, and the bearing itself.

I get the new housing end, and see how tightly it fits over the bearing…..
It goes on exactly as it should.

So now I’m conflicted. The axles will go in, despite the fact that you have to beat them in to get them there. I’m tempted to just leave it alone, and just focus on the gear noise since the diff is out, but for the life of me, I can’t see a pattern that even looks remotely like what all the damn pictures look like online. I have no freakin clue what to do here.
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Do you think the housing end is bad, like under tolerance for the bearing? Can you measure the ID from both ends and compare with the new ends? Are all of these from the same manufacturer?

From what I remember working with my 9"ers, once everything is lined up they sort of pop in without too much of a fight.
 
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Do you think the housing end in bad, like under tolerance for the bearing? Can you measure the ID from both ends and compare with the new ends? Are all of these from the same manufacturer?

From what I remember working with my 9"ers, once everything is lined up they sort of pop in without too much of a fight.
I called Moser. They found it odd but stated that as long as the axles actually fit that shouldn’t be a problem. Nonetheless I’m going to change the ends anyway. I took the differential with the ring gear on it to the guy I was going to use to set up the gears in the first place and had him look At the pattern. He said that he really didn’t think it looked that bad, actually said he couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I’m thinking that the preloaded bearings might be making noise, I don’t know for sure.
 
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That gear pattern looks good to me, too. If the fluid looks good there isn't anything eating itself back there. I'm interested to know what the issue is.
 
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I cant help myself.

If i try to save myself money, I just end up spending more anyway.

I cut 10-1/8” off the housing on each end. I get in the car, and now knowing what I wanted, go to metal supermarket and instead of buying two 15” pieces, I get 2 9” pieces of 3” .250 wall dom tubing. Instead of it costing 75, like i
I was originally quoted, it ends up only. costing 50 bucks instead.

:banana:Woooo look at me! Saving all of that Monnaaay!
The rest of the steel only costs me another 50 bucks, so instead of the 150.0” I was expecting, I get out of there for 100.
so far, so good.

I need supplies, saw blades for the band saw, cut off wheels, and several cans of brake clean.

Another 50 bucks.

The Housing ends cost half what the ends from Moser cost, so again, instead of paying 100.00 bucks, I payed 50 there too. They had been ordered for some time now, and I was just gonna build up what I needed in anticipation of the day I’d do this. The ends came in two separate boxes for whatever reason, one was smaller than the other. And I only opened the small box just to see what they looked like.

Once home, i took the open end to see how it would fit on the new tubing. I decided to go ahead and tack it onto the new tubing so that lining the whole thing up would be easier. I opened the other box to get the other end out, and was rewarded by finding a mechanical stock replacement fuel pump for who knows what engine instead.

Fck me all to hell.

Now what? I’ve got the rear end cut apart, and only one housing end that is now tacked on the new tubing.

I did what you’d expect me to do.

First I threw sht around while having a full on conniption fit…..all while yelling out obscenities like someone with full blown Turrets syndrome.

Then I took the old housing end that was so tight…and using the new alignment bushing as a test fit piece,..I clearance that thing a little at a time with a die grinder until it fit.
And then welded the sht back on that I had cut off two hours before.
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That freakin alignment shaft that runs through the rear end turns by hand. It’s tight, but the bushings are a little tight anyway. Initially you couldnt even get the end bushing into the driver side housing end, but after about 39 minutes with the die grinder, I changed all that. I lost a little over 1/16 in total length, but I couldn’t put anymore of a gap than what was already there, so,…it is what it is.

So, in the end, I completely wasted this day. And I’ve got a whole additional day that i’ll have to spend putting everything back together. At the same time I threw away 100 bucks on steel that i don’t need, 50 bucks on a housing end I can’t return, and can’t even remember where I got it from, so I can return the freakin fuel pump and get the other housing end instead.

:poo:Woooo! Look at me! throwin away all that monaay!
 
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Reading thru your posts about beating the axle in/out made me think that I had read about some differences in the bearings on 9" axle ends. Found where I read it, Post #16


Makes no difference since you've got it all fixed while saving all those $$$$$. :p
I’m aware that there are two different bearing sizes. However they are so far apart from each other you could never beat a big bearing into a small bearing housing end.
 
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Let's make lemonade out of lemons:
1) You have realigned / fixed the current axle combination. 2) You didn't have to cut off, fabricate, or weld the LCA / shock mounts onto the new tubes. 3) You have most of the raw materials (less one end) to do this again over the winter if necessary. 4) You have the alignment shaft ready to go to do this again if necessary. and 5) If you can cross reference the fuel pump part number, assuming that pump is still in one piece, you might be able to bounce it online and break even on the axle end $$$.

In Michigan we always look for someone we know to buy a new snowblower each year, because that expensive purchase usually guarantees that we'll get a light winter where it won't be needed. The same principle applies for pre-emptive car parts and fabrication materials.

Really impressive fab work! Fingers crossed that this solves the rear end whine noise.
 
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I removed the pinion from the housing today purely because I thought it would be covered in metal funk from all of the cutting/grinding/welding I have been doing.
I put the diff into the saddle and snugged up the caps, then stuck the axles in. They still require that they are bumped in with a hammer, but the difference this time is instead of beating them in, a few taps with the same hammer gets them seated.
Trying to determine carrier bearing preload. Right now, I can tighten the bearing caps, set up a dial indicator perpendicular on the side of the ring gear, get a pry bar and stick it between the ring gear and a bearing cap and I pry….

It moves .003”.

I don’t think it’s supposed to move…at all.

Maybe the backlash change that might be happening in drive is causing the noise, ya think?
 
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Well what can I say…,There’s still daylight, and Kates on the road for work. I got nobody to answer to, and my time’s my own. Despite all that, I quit early.
And I’m happy with where I am.
I ended up re-checking everything on the rear. After removing the pinion and cleaning the housing, I reinstalled it using the same “crushed” crush sleeve. I tightened the piss out of it and checked pinion bearing preload.
It was exactly where it was when I removed it.
I ended up adding .002 on each side bearing to add some carrier bearing preload. Friday, I measured movement at .003. Today with an additional .004 put in for for good measure, you cannot get any movement.
After that I checked backlash, and it was still at the same .012 that I had when I set it up.
And finally, even though for the life of me I cannot see anything that makes sense when using the yellow paint on the gear teeth to ck the wear pattern , I did that too.

And it still didn’t make any sense.

So I put the thing back together.
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The paint that was on there was just cheap rattle can “ Nuthin special” satin black. It looked like ass on a plate. I stripped it off.

I don’t know if I’ll end up regretting it, but I put Bed liner back on it. Hopefully it’ll be more resistant to scratching. Once it was dry, I put the rear back under the car, hoping like hell that everything went back the way it came out.
Seemed like it did.
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Still a few things left to do, but I’m not too worried about getting that done till next week. The drag radials are gone, and the NT05’s won’t be here till Tuesday, and I’m not putting it back on the Sumitomos.
So, nothing to do now but wait.
 
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The Nittos are due in today. I had the drag radials dismounted from their rims Saturday and sold them. The amount of weight that got put on those rims was pretty significant, partly because they were drag radials, but also in part because these wheels are wonky.
That leaves me to look at the back of the rims that the Sumitomos are mounted on…

One rim has very little weight, one rim has none.
Ive never had a wheel that balanced out w/o so much as a 1/4 oz placed somewhere, and that was usually using a tire that was smaller in width than what these Sumitomos are. It doesn’t look like the wheel lost it’s weight, it looks like there never was any.

Is there such a thing as a tire/wheel combo that is perfectly balanced just by putting the two together?

I find this to be dubious.
 
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When i was right out of high school and working at a service station. I mounted and balanced a ton of tires. occasionally they would be balanced without weights added. When i did my own stuff or for friends etc i would mount and check then break bead and rotate tire to get the least amount of weight and there were times i could get it balanced without weight. Maybe you got lucky on that one tire?
 
The paint that was on there was just cheap rattle can “ Nuthin special” satin black. It looked like ass on a plate. I stripped it off.
:lol:
I’m stuck trying to picture and interpret this similie. Without information on the species, it could be a good thing. A donkey steak does not sound appetizing. And a web search brings up Winchester butt plates and fitness pictures.
I hope the noise and vibration is taken care of.
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Edit - Found it!!! I remember seeing goofy things like this in an antique store.
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:lol:
I’m stuck trying to picture and interpret this similie. Without information on the species, it could be a good thing. A donkey steak does not sound appetizing. And a web search brings up Winchester butt plates and fitness pictures.
I hope the noise and vibration is taken care of.
D539EA0D-518C-4B31-94C8-60481FA67B04.jpeg

Edit - Found it!!! I remember seeing goofy things like this in an antique store.
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That’s a much better looking ass on a plate than what I was trying to describe.
 
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When i was right out of high school and working at a service station. I mounted and balanced a ton of tires. occasionally they would be balanced without weights added. When i did my own stuff or for friends etc i would mount and check then break bead and rotate tire to get the least amount of weight and there were times i could get it balanced without weight. Maybe you got lucky on that one tire?
The “ glass half empty” guy in me prefers to believe that this was one of the reasons for the high speed vibration. The glass half full dude knows that that is probably not the case.
 
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