Changing a rearend, how hard?

[deftsound]

Well me and another stangnet friend were thinkin about trading rearends. His car is a 98 with over 150k miles on it and hes selling his car. He had his rearend rebuilt with everything rebuilt except the axles axle bearings and diff housing a few months ago and he had 3.73 gears put in. I have a stock rearend in my 99 and wanted to trade.

My question is what would go into the swap? How hard and how do you do it? From my understanding it would be a pretty simple swap but ive never done it so i wouldnt know.

 

[Torinalth]

simple swap yes. just donr forget you have things like E brake lines, brakes hoses, and the damn traction control wire. aside from those you have the UCAs, LCAs, and then the driveshaft. dont forget about the springs, and shocks you have to contend with.

still fairly simple, but you will need to take note on a few things. oh, and i doubt he has traction control on his vehicle.. yours proly does... might need to look into switching hubs as well.

Torinalth

 

[trailblazr81]

Shouldnt be too hard as long as you have enough jackstands. Just take your time and remember to grap all the little clips and such. Also if you havent done this in a while, with the rear-end out it will be easier to replace your fuel filter. And dont touch your e-brake once its D/C and bleed the brakes properly.

 

[hognutz]

well it is pretty simple. after the wheels are off

1. upper and lower control arm bolts (sway will have to come off)
2. lower shock bolts
3. abs sensors
4. quad shocks
5. calipers and brakets
6. drive shaft

once all that is unbolted the rear drops out. now if you want to take his calipers, shocks anything like that there will be more work. if you have enough jack stands and are just swaping the housing only it should be a one day job easy.

 

[Mike97gt]

the traction control works off of the abs sensors there is no seperate traction control wiring or sensors.

 

[Torinalth]

the traction control works off of the abs sensors there is no seperate traction control wiring or sensors.

that was what i was referring to... and yes then it shouldnt matter... my slight mix up. forgot we had the cog based ABS sensor.

Torinalth

 

[deftsound]

my car doesnt have traction control so thats not a problem

 

[deftsound]

now i dont have to take off my control arms or anything, just unbolt it all right? I put my springs in a while back so i think i hava a good general knowledge of how to do this

 

[Torinalth]

ummmm... i think they are the same arms... no, no they are not. MM has different part numbers for them, so you would have to keep the arms on your car.

Torinalth

 

[FoxBodyGT]

you're rear end housing are different length, arent' they? I know the axles are longer on the 99+ cars.

Just something to think about

 

[hognutz]

now i dont have to take off my control arms or anything, just unbolt it all right? I put my springs in a while back so i think i hava a good general knowledge of how to do this

you just take the bolt off at the housing end and drop the spring out. you can leave the other end bolted.


as for the housings being different this is easy to verify just measure the control are locations and the overall width. width can be correced by wheel spacers or different offset rims. control arm locations is not as simple to correct.

 

[Torinalth]

aye. you might want to shoot a line to someone like MM and see what they have to say, or maybe a friendly local mustang shop that knows their stuff? i dont know enough about axles, just noticed the control arms are different. might want to see of SVTech knows more.

Torinalth