More of the same,....a whole day spent,..little of nothing done.
I started out w/ the goal of determining whether or not a 255/40/17, mounted on a 17x9 rim will fit on the front of the car.
Initially,...it didn't.......till I tugged on the fender lip:
With the ride height set to where I think I want it, in a bass-ackward kind of method,...It fits
Uhhh.....that is till you turn the wheel:
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
It doesn't matter which way you turn,..the tire makes contact everywhere. It will hit the fender lip, the rim will hit the lower control arm, I just don't see how I can keep a tire/rim this size on the car, and not have to baby it through turns.
It's been suggested that I bail on the 17x9/255 front wheels,..and fall back to a 17 x8/245.... but I cannot return them since I now have bolted the one on,....and even if I could, I'm sure the freight would be a killer.
I shelved the front tire dilemma,...and moved to the rear end.
Again,....I was "advised" by another to set the rear tires at full bump before I measured the space between mounting surfaces to transpose to the rear end. Doing that required I move the tires in another 1/4" each side. The new total rear end length had to be 57.5",....the rear end was 61.125",.... 3-5/8" too long. I needed to cut 1.750" off of each tube.
I stripped the thing of it's brakes and axles,...and started cutting off the quad shock mounts.
A sawzall is my weapon of choice,...cutting the quad shock mount into little pieces until I got it down to a grind-able nub. Once there,...I smoothed the tube w/ a flap wheel.
To make the first reference cut,...I got a big-assed hose clamp and put it on the tube, using the axle flange as a measure reference to square the clamp up.
I outlined the clamp w/ a sharpie,....and used a 4.5" cutoff wheel to cut it off.
I originally started using a sawzall to do this,..but it is too hard to keep a precise cut,..so I just used the cutoff wheel to do it....once it was gone,...I moved the clamp over 1.750" traced it,..and cut it off as well.
It was at this juncture, that I have to call in the pro's,...as now that the housing was narrowed,...I didn't have a housing jig to put the thing back together. I loaded the thing up, and went to his shop. The process required that I knock out the bearings out of the housing ends,...and remove the diff. He had several different aluminum "donuts" to support the tube in the housing,...using the bearing caps after the diff was removed.
Doing it this way serves as a testament to what kind of life the rear end saw from it's previous owners,...as the tubes will bend in almost all 8.8's depending on how abused they were. Having that big bar running through the donuts makes it very obvious, real quick as the housing end will not line up w/ the tube.
On one side,..( the driver side) the tube was barely offset,..and after welding, imperceptable. The Passenger side,...the launch side,...the side that digs the hardest when you side step the clutch,...well that's a little different.
My passenger side axle was bent enough to require the housing end be welded a little under an 1/8th offset. Looking at it before welding looks like it's Phucked up as a rats' ass,...but again,..after welding,...not so bad.
The pictures of all of the above?....sorry, forgot my camera when I left for the shop.
I guess all this crap was ordained from the beginning.......as it was fate that I had to open the rear end to remove the diff, and reveal to me that the 3.73 gear I thought I had was off a little.
It wasn't a 3.73,...it was a
2.73 that is in this rear,...another unexpected 500.00.
I left the rear at his shop,..and I gotta order 3.55's,...new bearings,...and send the axle to Moser for shortening, resplining,..and cut for C-clips.