Axle Dampener

Mustang922 said:

Awesome! Thanks for the quick respond! It's on there tightly ain't going anywhere just figured if I could I would replace the bushings. Is it necessary to have? Only ask because you said some take it off with gears and next winter I plan on having the rear end completely rebuilt with new gears, axles, the works

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The point of the weight is to dampen harmonics (and resulting vibration) caused by the gears. The higher numerically the gear set, the less effective the dampener is.

The old way of thinking was that the dampener was "tuned" to the frequency of the stock gears.....but since gear choices for fox bodies ranged from 2.73, to 3.08, to 3.27....and they all used the same dampener, this theory is full of holes.

Higher gear sets cause an increase in vibration.....that's just the way it is. So while the dampener may not as effectively control the resonating gear set as well when a set of say 3.73's is in the housing, it's still certainly better than nothing.

Many fill further attempt to justify its removal by claiming a weight savings....which technically is true....but we're talking all of 20lbs here.....and that's 20lbs at the rear axle to boot, where you want the weight. If it was coming off the front end, it would be a different story, but removing it from the rear is going to take whatever you gain in over all weight reduction and nullify it with a lesser ability to control wheel spin.


....so yeah, long story short....leave it there.