here is how we fitted the ten bolt pumpkin between our ( I think 8.
Ford tubes from memory there was a 63/72mm mismatch from the GM OD to the Ford ID, Soooooooo, it may well have been a slide over fit.......This was our first attempt, then we went at it with a piece of 3/4 all thread for a little more oomph, that did the trick........
We got some way into the job to fit the housing for the ten bolt rear end.
After having a crack at pulling one of the inserts in last week we elected to have a closer look. It seems where the axle tubes were welded into the frame that they were pinched a little by the cooled weld. We took to that with a stone and then gave it a polish with a flap wheel, on the next try the progress was a whole lot more even.Next we had a look at the housing itself. due to the way things had to go together we needed to pull the inserts from inside the housing, that meant there had to be a clear path. Turns out that the machining wasn't perfect and the axle "hole" didn't line up exactly with the relief behind the bearing seat so there was a bit of de-burring and clearancing there too.
So, we've got a three foot piece of half inch rod with some 8.8grade 5/8 thread welded on either end and a bunch of thick washers, short pieces of pipe and other assorted items to use as spacers.....
The idea is to pull the insert from the inside of the housing into the axle tube, the end of the insert that fits the housing is slightly larger than the end that goes into the axle tube, we put a chamfer on the step where the dia. changes just to stop it "ploughing" anything. Once we got both sides started we decided we needed force on both at once or it would just be a see-saw so we quickly knocked up another length of seamless tube with a bolt out either end and got started.....there was a bit of tension in the system at this point, and we had noticed that the "legs" which wrap around the axle tubes were pulling inwards...they're half inch steel....In the shot below you'll see the ends of the puller rods inside the housing, you may also notice that the washer on the right is buckling......
The movement had been slowing, the force applied increasing......we paused to assess...."so,where is it moving?"....I gave it a few more turns and there was a resounding TWANG! followed by some tinkling of parts, the washer on the right had given up the rod pulled through the middle of it and the washer went flying, we figure from where it ended up that it went between the Reverends legs.......unseen.
Nothing was broken, the legs had popped back to straight. I figure we need to use a porta-power to push the inserts from within the housing as well as pulling them.
On a side we cut some nice holes to plug weld the inserts into the axle tubes, I think they are a leeeetle bit wide....hmmmmmmmm
All in all though we made slow but effective progress, I'm yet to research the availability/compatability of the universal joints on the tailshaft and haven't bothered working out whether we'll need to lengthen the tailshaft, if we have to shorten it there's gonna be problems, there is only about an inch and a half of tube, that means we can probably only shorten it 3/4 of an inch...... as it sits though it seems to line up pretty well(not perfect here but well within limits),
we have plenty of side to side adjustability, we need to do a trial fit to see that the stock Ford axles will be the right length with the centre in the centre or so to speak.
This is just another example of "you had to be there to understand why we did it this way".
