Post #51, 8/17/14 Ford 8" Rear End Rebuild

 

65 Mustang Restoration

Since the bodywork is making progress, I figured that since we plan on installing the suspension when I get it back this Fall, I should get started on some of the time consuming items that'll need to be done. So, over the last couple of weeks I decided to tear into the 3rd member for the Ford 8" rear end, and have been doing a bit here & there. 

  Over the last couple of years I have been able to acquire a couple of extra 3rd members,,, and when I saw the double rib on this at the stock car auction, I was kind of excited,, I won it for $15,, he, he, he,,, It may be ugly now, but I know what it can & will look like when it's done. All it was missing was the 2 locking tabs for the carrier bearing adjusters,,, which I have spares of. 

I disassembled everything, cleaned up the gook & grease the best I could, took it home & handed it off to Brent who then blasted the daylights out of it,,, boy did it turn out nice.
 

  
Here is the collection of parts I have accumulated over the last couple of years, all for this build. (just because I haven't posted anything, doesn't mean that I wasn't still working on this project).

Though the car came with an awesome 2:79 rear gear,, I wanted to spunk it up a bit, but without killing the road-tripping ability & gas mileage,,, so I bought a New 3.25 Gear from "staticz2229" the guy on ebay I have bought all of my gears & bearing sets for years,, great parts and great prices & service (Ames, Iowa).

Took the housing back to the shop & had Waldo give it a nice coat of the Red Oxide Primer(with hardner). Before he shot it, I had already installed all of the new bearings & races, so there'd be less of a chance of messing up the paint. I prepped the seal surface on the yoke before painting it with "Eastwood's" Brake Grey paint. 
 

This is the like-new 8" Posi carrier that I got on ebay for only $100, compared to the normal $385. The guy switched to a 9" which worked out great for me,, Nice looking piece!
 

Several years ago while building several 9" gears for the race car, I built a little jig to hold the pumpkins while setting up the gears. It's just a simple little item, but it sure works nice. Though it's built for 9" pumpkins, I found out that I could also use it for the 8" pumpkin.
Works just fine.

These are all of the parts for the pinion section,, before & after assembly. When assembling a pinion with new gears, we adjust the pre-load to 20-30 inch lbs.,,, (which you basically check by holding the housing & adapting an inch-pound torque wrench to the pinion nut socket & turning,,, seeing how much pressure it takes to turn the whole pinion). Since I had oiled up the bearings, I set the pre-load to only 20 inch lbs.
 

 

Next the ring gear & carrier(posi) are installed & adjusted with a .012" backlash (how far you can move the ring gear back & forth without moving the pinion gear). And with everything torqued down (65 lbs. on the cap bolts),,, you grease up the teeth, rotate the pinion(holding as much pressure as you can on the ring gear) until it contacts the greased up section(forwards & backwards) a couple of times,, then check out the patterns on both sides of the ring gear.

 

Note,, when setting up the gears, it easiest to leave the large O-ring off of the pinion section until final assembly,, helps when you have to try different shims. 
  I started off by using the original pinion shim and ended up using a shim that was .005" thinner, and this is what the patterns ended up looking like,,, needless to say,, I was very happy with these patterns.

And here it is after Final Assembly,,, all prettied up & ready for some cruise'n.

Here's a nice 3rd member holder that came with an old 9" gear I had,, but it'll also work just fine for the 8" pumpkin. Great for storing the gear until it's needed.
 

While working on several rear ends on newer Ford Explorers & Escapes I notice that their fill plugs had a nice magnet built into the plug,,, figured that would work very nicely for me also,, so here's what it looks like & the Ford Part #.

 

I hope this was helpful to some of you out there,, it was fun fixing one of these up for something other than a race car,,, and to be honest,, this was my 1st Ford 8" rear end setup,,, but it's really no different than a 9" gear,, very simple to do,, just have to take your time.

 

Till next time,,, cya