Little thread on how I'm building a cheap 9" ford for a G body.
Rear end is for a group drag car project. Everybodys' taking chuncks for the build. I donated my 85 cutlass roller since it was solid but missing too much to go back on the road. Im handling the rear so here it goes.
It takes a lot of rear end to handle this-
Rear end I am working with is a 9" ford out of a late 70's Lincoln Towncar. It has disk brakes and I was told it was out of a Lincoln Versailles. Versailles are the right width at 58" but this rear measures 63" so it had to get cut down. Rear end was donated though and the junkyard I source a lot of parts through didnt have any so I just decided to tackle it.
I started by cutting the old rear down, pulled the carrier and axles out and cut off the brackets. I stuck it in a large bandsaw and cut 3" of of the tubes and put the ends in a lathe and turned off the welds and knocked the original ends off. Im reusing these BTW.
All cleaned up
I had the 7.5" out of my car to change gears so I built a jig to locate the control arm locations, spring perches, centerline, and shock mounts.
Instal rear end into jig. Clamps to hold in place are just 3" muffler clamps. 7.5" axles are 2.5" so I had to put a piece of rubber around the tube to make up the difference.
For the LCA brackets I took a piece of 3 1/2" square tube 4" long cut in half and welded it to the axle. It gets a nice flat surface to weld the LCA bracket to and you dont have to worry about drilling and odd sized hole in a crooked way.
LCA braket material is 1/4" think (stock is 3/16, when you have 800+ HP you dont want to rip LCA brackets apart). Plates are 3" wide and 4.5" long. Rear filler plate is 2.5" wide. I also drilled another hole down 3/4" in case the LCA needs to get moved down for whatever reason.
Spring perch is just a big washer. G bodies have a spring location biased toward the rear of the axle. Its better to move the spring forward from what Ive read. I am going to end up puting it just ahead of the centerline.
More coming soon! Its far from done so if stuff looks wonky its probably getting revised. 😀
Rear end is for a group drag car project. Everybodys' taking chuncks for the build. I donated my 85 cutlass roller since it was solid but missing too much to go back on the road. Im handling the rear so here it goes.
It takes a lot of rear end to handle this-
Rear end I am working with is a 9" ford out of a late 70's Lincoln Towncar. It has disk brakes and I was told it was out of a Lincoln Versailles. Versailles are the right width at 58" but this rear measures 63" so it had to get cut down. Rear end was donated though and the junkyard I source a lot of parts through didnt have any so I just decided to tackle it.
I started by cutting the old rear down, pulled the carrier and axles out and cut off the brackets. I stuck it in a large bandsaw and cut 3" of of the tubes and put the ends in a lathe and turned off the welds and knocked the original ends off. Im reusing these BTW.
All cleaned up
I had the 7.5" out of my car to change gears so I built a jig to locate the control arm locations, spring perches, centerline, and shock mounts.
Instal rear end into jig. Clamps to hold in place are just 3" muffler clamps. 7.5" axles are 2.5" so I had to put a piece of rubber around the tube to make up the difference.
For the LCA brackets I took a piece of 3 1/2" square tube 4" long cut in half and welded it to the axle. It gets a nice flat surface to weld the LCA bracket to and you dont have to worry about drilling and odd sized hole in a crooked way.
LCA braket material is 1/4" think (stock is 3/16, when you have 800+ HP you dont want to rip LCA brackets apart). Plates are 3" wide and 4.5" long. Rear filler plate is 2.5" wide. I also drilled another hole down 3/4" in case the LCA needs to get moved down for whatever reason.
Spring perch is just a big washer. G bodies have a spring location biased toward the rear of the axle. Its better to move the spring forward from what Ive read. I am going to end up puting it just ahead of the centerline.
More coming soon! Its far from done so if stuff looks wonky its probably getting revised. 😀
