A couple weeks ago my brother was out snow wheeling in his 79 Chevy shortbox Just doing hot laps in his back yard in a couple feet of snow and he just happens to scatter the auburn and ring&pinion in his 12-bolt. Well I found him a 14-bolt with 3.73 and a limited slip and a matching D44 to replace the 3.43(?).
We dropped the old Axle out and here is where the fun began spring paddies, shock mounts, pinion yoke, driveline length, wheel studs, e-brake cables and brake hydro lines all needed to be addressed.
I went to work on relocating the spring pads and my brother went to work on the brake. Well as I was working on the brake issues I found the diff cover to be just paper thin they spared no expense on building this 14-bolt diff cover and I mean no expense thin, so I went ahead an built him a little protection for the ring gear. We get the brakes and spring pads and all the other not needed brackets cut off so the axle is ready to bolt... Damn the axle tube is 1/2 wider we need new u-bolt first road trip to Oly4x4 for some new u-bolts and pads Oly had new u-bolts and some rust old pads we head back home we get the axle bolted in and set the pinion angle and get the new drive line length so we run back out you see what we can find from pull-a-part we find a 3 inch shorter driveline but rear u-joint is a 1310 and we need a 1430 back to Napa we find mixed size u-joint
back to the garage we bolt it all up then go to put the tires on the lug bolts only go on about 2 turns and stop.... hmmm what the hell we find out the lug bolts are metric 14mm x 1.50 run back to Napa back to the garage; rear is back on it's tires :awesomework: I also went ahead and built a anti-rap bar.
The front axle was less eventful except for the drag link the studs on the old axle where 1/2 and the studs on the new axle where 5/8 so back to Monroe and no one had and cones so back to the garage I checked through all my boxes of crap and we lucked out and I had a set of 5/8 cones.
Some place a long the way we stopped in at todai for some sushi MMMMM.
We dropped the old Axle out and here is where the fun began spring paddies, shock mounts, pinion yoke, driveline length, wheel studs, e-brake cables and brake hydro lines all needed to be addressed.
I went to work on relocating the spring pads and my brother went to work on the brake. Well as I was working on the brake issues I found the diff cover to be just paper thin they spared no expense on building this 14-bolt diff cover and I mean no expense thin, so I went ahead an built him a little protection for the ring gear. We get the brakes and spring pads and all the other not needed brackets cut off so the axle is ready to bolt... Damn the axle tube is 1/2 wider we need new u-bolt first road trip to Oly4x4 for some new u-bolts and pads Oly had new u-bolts and some rust old pads we head back home we get the axle bolted in and set the pinion angle and get the new drive line length so we run back out you see what we can find from pull-a-part we find a 3 inch shorter driveline but rear u-joint is a 1310 and we need a 1430 back to Napa we find mixed size u-joint
back to the garage we bolt it all up then go to put the tires on the lug bolts only go on about 2 turns and stop.... hmmm what the hell we find out the lug bolts are metric 14mm x 1.50 run back to Napa back to the garage; rear is back on it's tires :awesomework: I also went ahead and built a anti-rap bar.The front axle was less eventful except for the drag link the studs on the old axle where 1/2 and the studs on the new axle where 5/8 so back to Monroe and no one had and cones so back to the garage I checked through all my boxes of crap and we lucked out and I had a set of 5/8 cones.
Some place a long the way we stopped in at todai for some sushi MMMMM.
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but we found some clearance issues with the 35" tires so next time he drives over I will pull out the plasma or sawsall or both and do some clearancing.
