1970 Dart Swinger FINALLY UNDERWAY

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Got the axle back from the shop! They put quite a bit of weld on it, should do the job I think. Still need to weld the axle tubes, cut the sway bar brackets and perches, and get new perches on it. The shop was nice and pulled the old wheel bearings for me, which is good since I don't have a slide hammer.

This center housing is still the most disturbingly rusted thing I've ever seen, guy at the shop said the metal is plenty thick so it's not an issue. :blob:

Also my motor mounts came in. :burnout:

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My 8.8 started out rusted similar to the way yours is now, not the way yours started out. A needle scaler and sandblasting will make it look new again:



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I doubt mine will look quite as nice as yours jrlegacy. Got my hands on an air needler at went at the housing with, turns out the scale on it was a little more than it could handle so I ended up going back to the chisel and mallet method. Finally found some good metal.

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Well well well here we go AGAIN with the never ending rear end crap. Decided to break out the tape measure to check where I was going to put the spring perches. lo and behold the shop cut one side 1" short. So now I have a 17" passenger side tube and a 16"in drivers side tube instead of them being equal lengths. Apparently they misunderstood me when I said I wanted to center the housing and completely ignored the part where I said to cut the long tube down to the same length as the other side. Looks like they went off the pinion flange and centered that instead.

I'm convinced the mopar gods are actually working against me now :mrgreen:, this is now the second axle I've got, both have gotten screwed up some how. Hell I lost part of a finger to the first axle when it fell on me, and I still haven't gotten so far as getting a rear end actually under the car.

/vent

In other news, this little part fell out of the axle housing while I was turning it over. Anyone familiar with the 8.8 have a clue that it is?

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That piece look like it might be a roller from the bearings.
As for the housing, you still have another one, you could always cut a few inches off the still good spare side and add it on to correct the length.
 
That would make sense looking at it, doesn't seem to be missing from anything I still have so it must have come from the old wheel bearings. Thanks.

As for the housing I don't know what I can do with it I'm not buying another one because I'm just sick of this. It would be easy if the shop would just swap the good tube from the other axle but they had told me before that the way they remove the axle tube would make is unsafe to reuse. I'm going to visit the shop that did it on monday and see what can be done to correct this problem.
 
Have them cut 6" off the extra housing tube you have. Then have them cut 5" off the tube they messed up. Then set up a straight jig like I did in my picture above (post #252) and weld the tubes together, which would make it 1" longer than now. If you or they are worried about strength, have then put a slug in there. I don't think it is that big of a deal as long as they fix it.
 
I'll just bring all the pieces I have with me when I pay them a visit monday morning. Until then there's nothing I can do on the car since the next couple steps hinge on me being able to paint the engine bay, and it's still 40 degrees outside.
 
Ok so, just a little update. I got the axle back from the shop again. I was right they measured off the yoke and not the casting so it ended up with the wrong offset, they fixed it free of charge with another inch of tube and a slug and it's dead on now.

Continuing my rear end swap which is once again plagued by my own minor oversights. Cleaned up the tubes and decided to try my hand at welding them up. Borrowed a friend's MIG and set up with it to get to work. Wasn't expecting too much difficultly since I did OK laying beads all over random scrap metal when I had a flux core welder over here. What I ended up doing was laying some spattery chicken poop with the MIG and no amount of fiddling with the voltage or wire speed could correct this. I only found out what the problem most likely was when my fuse box was buzzing very noticeably and I figured out that I was running a 20a welder through a 15a circuit and somehow didn't trip the breaker. I only have one 20a circuit and it's for the washing machine, sadly I can find no extension cord rated for higher than 15a. Progress halted again.

I built the engine in less time than I've put into this rear end.

Picked up one of those horror freight compressors so I'd have enough juice to spray some paint under the hood and run air tools every once in a while. I must say I'm actually pretty impressed with it. I got the 21 gallon 2.5hp oiled compressor. Ran it for 30 minutes today to break it in and change the oil and it still built up 30psi in the tank with both valves opened up. Tank got a little warm to the touch but it didn't heat up too much really. I've come to the conclusion that this is actually a rebranded campbell-hausfeld, I noticed it used the same regulator as the larget CH compressors so I started looking a little closer and they even have the same motor and compressor on them. Different sticker, different color. Not bad for $149.99 if I say so myself.
 
My CH compressor is still buzzing away after about 10 years of extended use. The first project I used it for was porting about three sets of iron heads...and I wanna say its only a 13 gal version with a oil less compressor...noisy as hell, but worked pretty well!

Every now and then even harbor freight gets it right...

Can't wait to see more of this build!
 
Axle is welded up nice now, tubes are welded and the perches are on and set. Will be cleaning it up and re-assembling next to get it ready to go under the car.

Another chapter in my rear axle saga, while I was grinding the perches off I managed to get a shard of metal up behind my safety glasses which lodged itself in my cornea. I found that out today since my eye was so irritated this morning at drill that my unit sent me to get it checked out at the hospital. In addition to having metal in my cornea I also got myself pink eye from rubbing it. On the plus side they removed it while I was there, gave me vicodin for the pain, and I went home and slept for the rest of the day. The axle and I do not get along well these days.

I'll have more money to put into the car soon, starting a new job this thursday. I got hired on as a diesel mechanic at one of the businesses I worked security at. Though my garage is now woefully under stocked in the tool department, since I took the shop truck and moved the majority of my tools in. I still need to collect more but I'll buy and stock up as I figure out what I need. I did pick up a really nice Wright 3/4" ratchet and socket set, box has a bunch of snap on sockets as well and a second S-K ratchet. Got a nice Blue Point impact off ebay as well.

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Goo! I despise getting metal in my eyes, but that's pretty rough man...keep the antibiotics up and get well. So, by reading here, you're a Guardsman?
 
Haha, thanks it still stings a bit but it's a lot better today and less irritated. I'm a 91B wheeled vehicle mechanic in the Reserves, I operate a 20 ton oshkosh 8x8 wrecker.

I literally slept all day yesterday, woke up for a bout 4 hours then fell back asleep for the rest of the night.
 
Yeahhh, vicodin will do that-ha! Cool deal though-my brother was a 12B active and guard, and I'm in the AF...B-1 crew chief.

I've had shards fall into my eye while working on B-1s, and were able to be washed out...thankfully, but they still scratched the cornea. You're correct-that **** is irritating!
 
Hey it's keeping me happy and at least I can't feel the irritation so no complaints! I have a cousin that just enlisted 11B in the guard, tried to talk him out of being a bang bang but the recruiters were more convincing I guess. He hasn't left for basic yet, OSUT he's gonna have lot's of fun haha!

Lancers huh? Man that's a pretty bird, one of my favorite military aircraft right behind the SU-35. I can't say I'm not jealous, fanciest thing I've ever piloted was a Cessna 172S with a G1000.
 
Well since I moved most of my tools into the shop I'm a little bit short handed here at home, I'll have to replenish my stock. Can't do much with the axle without my sockets and wrenches so I went at the leaf springs, a long overdue project of getting the old metal outer rings out from the old bushings since the new urethane bushings do not use them. Took a friends suggestion and carefully cut through them from the inside with a sawzall before using a number of cheap harbor freight screwdrivers to hammer in and collapse the sleeve. Took a bit of time but I got one of them completely done with new bushings and attached the shackle. Taking a break for dinner then I'll finish up the passenger side spring.

In periodical axle news, I discovered the pinion bearings are bad, like 1/8 of free play in all directions bad and spinning it feels like spinning a chainsaw. Something I probably should have checked before but at least this is just a minor delay and not a serious screw up like the usual axle updates. I'm going to do the carrier bearings while I'm at it since the only way to get the head bearing and tail bearing for the pinion was to buy them in a kit with the carrier bearings. Can't hurt anyway. I will have to wait until I can bring some of my tools home from work, or buy more, before I can attack that though.

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FomocoReformed said:
Hey it's keeping me happy and at least I can't feel the irritation so no complaints! I have a cousin that just enlisted 11B in the guard, tried to talk him out of being a bang bang but the recruiters were more convincing I guess. He hasn't left for basic yet, OSUT he's gonna have lot's of fun haha!

Lancers huh? Man that's a pretty bird, one of my favorite military aircraft right behind the SU-35. I can't say I'm not jealous, fanciest thing I've ever piloted was a Cessna 172S with a G1000.
Click to expand...

They do look nice, but they're a challenge to maintain...a bunch of 70s/80s proprietary technologies mated with 80s manufacturing and now integrated with new technologies that greatly improve our battlefield capabilities...every subsystem on the jet ties into something else, and when the boxes don't communicate correctly, it can and will drive our specialists nutz trying to troubleshoot. All that being said, I'd like to think that it's kept some of my brethren out of harms way.
 
Oh-on the pinion bearings, I don't know how you feel about crush sleeves, but Ratech makes a solid pinion spacer so you don't have to worry about over loading the bearings or over crushing the sleeve-just set your pinion depth and adjust shims to gain correct bearing preload, and torque to spec.
 
That's not surprising, if there's one thing I've noticed in the military that seems to be universal it's that we like to hang on to things long past their intended service life. Usually by changing some insignificant system and then calling it a new model. Like how we have a craptillion different models of humvee and half of them are exactly the same truck with different doors on them and a new nomenclature. Keeps the joes in congress happy I guess when we need to come up with reasons why we want more money. :violent1: Buried deep in the back of my unit's supply cages is a switchboard telephone from 1952, which, for whatever reason, is a sensitive item and we are required to maintain it. :tard:

I actually am eliminating the crush sleeve for the pinion bearing, I don't like them and they take all the foot lbs in the world to compress. I didn't get the ratech but I ordered the Yukon solid spacer and shims. Can't go wrong with Yukon.
 
Well, all of our fleet here are undergoing upgrades, but there are a couple that have test equipment so they can accomplish certain mission testing...bunch of fuckin' primadonnas if you ask me. But I digress...as far as the money issue, we're losing a couple TDYs here and there if they're not truly "required" for continuing ops, or value added.

You are correct with Yukon stuff!
 
Ha, maybe there's just more trickery going on on the army side. Last fiscal year our motor sergeant ordered us to take the 5 yard loader and accidentally destroy an entire pallet of alternators behind the motor pool. That way we could retain the same budget for the next year by ordering more so we "needed" the funds. I saw quite a bit of waste like that on active duty at Ft Jackson. Good tools being thrown out, thousand dollar tool boxes, furniture, I saved stuff from the dumpster whenever I could. Hell we had trucks sitting in the motor pool that had only clocked miles in the hundreds before we turned them in for shiny new HEMTT A4s. Military industrial complex is a real corrupted load of garbage if I say so myself. Money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Yeah Yukon is good stuff, if I could afford it I'd get some axle shafts from them as well but my stockers should do fine for now. I'm swapping the carrier from the old 88 into this one since it's in better shape. I'm guessing it's a good idea to also swap in the pinion shaft/gear from along with it? They're both the same, 373 posi the one that came out of this axle is a little more well used.
 
Yeah, I don't think it would work out too well to mismatch used gearsets...even if they are the same ratio. Believe it or not, there were a couple different "cuts" of Ford 8.8 gears through the years...different pitch I think.

I can't say that I've seen quite the same level of FWA in my unit, but I know DRMO has turned us down for changing out our tools before...they told our support section "not to bring anymore of our trash." That "trash" was used industrial grade Snap-On tool sets...so, we kept most of them for spare tools when the new shiny ones broke or just wore out. Now, the office dwellers OTOH...yeah, when they get new office furniture every year, that definitely pisses me off-we have better **** to spend money on, even if it does come from "a different fund site."

...almost as bad as DC politicians some of them...
 
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