Rear End Swap 7-1/4" to 8-1/4"

doogievlg said

I have a 8 1/4 waiting in my garage to get put it. I still have no back plates at all so that is the only thing I am curious about. I was told I could go to any junkyard and get a set of 10x2.5 drums pretty easy. Did you just use sandpaper to strip down the rear end before painting it becuase I am working on mine now and the paper is wearing me out.

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Hi Doogievlg, glad you found this old thread. As far as I know, the back plates are the same for all of the 8-1/4 if they are 10X2.5". I am by no means an expert on mopar driveaxles so there may be a 10X2" set up too. If the donor rearend has 2.5" wide drums you should be ok grabbing the backing plates. Wheel cylinders and drums were still pretty reasonable when I assembled mine three years ago, would only go the junkyard route for the back plates and hardware. The brake bars are getting hard to come by new so make sure you get those with the back plates. All the spring hardware and retainers are cheap, make sure you use new stuff there too. If this rear is being run as is, no new guts, I would at the very least remove and inspect axles and replace the axle bearings and seals.

As far as cosmetic prep, I used a sandblaster to clean mine down to bare metal before hitting it with epoxy based primer,then a real nice coat of dupli color flat black for that factory/aged look. My rear axle was really cruddy, sandpaper would not have worked out as easily but it would work.