Mustang Rear Gear Swap Part 2: The Install

So, if you missed Part 1, The Tear Down, read that first, then come back for this, Part 2: The Install.  So, at the end of Part 1, we had removed the old ring and pinion.   Now we’re ready to install the Ford Racing 3.73 ring and pinion gear set from AmericanMuscle.com.

First, I wanted to show you what the Ford Racing 3.73 Gear Set comes with.  Ring gear, check.  Pinion gear check.  Crush sleeve, nut and shims, check, check and check.  But remember, its SUPER DUPER HIGHLY recommended that you ditch this crush sleeve and get yourself the Shim Spacer Pack for easier preload setup.  You’ll thank yourself later, trust me.

OK with Ford OEM/Racing gears i have found that they are pretty much ground on the same centerlines. So if you measure the pinion and shim after you’ve removed the pinion bearing and match the length to your new gears by adding the correct shim to equal the first measurement, you will be very close.  Now that being said, I always have to check the gear pattern and add or subtract shims to get the gear pattern correct. it is recomended to change the shim in .003″ increments. I ended up with a .027 ” shim.  I started with a .024″ shim.

If the gear pattern is “heavy” on the toe side of the gear (contact on the inside of ring gear) you need to add shim. If it is “heavy” toward the outside edge (heel of gear) you need to remove some thickness of the shim.  Now this is where having the pinion preload shim and spacer kit really makes life easy.  Crushing the the crush sleeve is a major gig and really takes a torque multiplier to do the job right and a serious bar tool with a flange to hold the pinion drive flange.  Check out my homemade tool shown in the picture below.  As you change the pinion shim you need to add or subtract from the preload shim pack to compensate for the pinion shim, as it will change the preload on the pinion bearing. 

These Ford Racing 3.73 gears have a lightened ring gear that should decrease 60ft times due to less rotating mass.

So, now you will install the pinion gear with the pinion preload shim pack and spacer.   Tighten to 125 ft lbs.  Again, check out the homemade cheater bar that comes in handy (this is the 5th gear set for this Mustang, its had 3.08′s, 3.55′s, 3.90′s, 4.10′s and now the 3.73′s.  Not much else to try.  haha).

Once you have the shim pack dialed in, set the preload to 25 in-lbs for new bearings or 18 in-lbs for used bearings.  Dig the big ‘n’ little wheel/tire setups in the background.  Also peep the stock mufflers.  Connected to an off-road H pipe there aren’t many automotive sounds that are more music to my ears!

Next you’ll bolt the gear onto the diff and torque ‘em down.  Torque value depends on bolts you’re using.  These are ARPs.  They’re around 50-60 ft-lbs.

Install the diff ring gear, put the shims back in.  It should have a tight fit preload.

Next step is to install the right shim. 

Then you can put the caps back on and torque them to 75 ft-lbs.

Measure and adjust the side shims to achieve a backlash clearance of .008″ to .012″.

Install the axle and re-install the C-clip.  Push the axle out to seat it.

 

Here the axle is seated with the C-clip and you’re ready to install spider gear drive pin.

There’s the drive pin.  Simply line it up with the hole in the diff.

Fasten the bolt and tighten down.  Now you’re ready to replace the diff cover.  Dont forget the gear oil!

Not a great picture here with the flash, but this was to show you the gear pattern on the drive side.

And this is the gear pattern on the drive side again.  Use gear marking compound.  Yellow works better!

Well, there you have it.  Please ask questions or make comments below.  Thanks to my pops for supplying the Mustang, tools, pictures and commentary, oh ya, and the wrenching.  Nice work!  Pops might not know how to work a camera too good, but he sure knows his way around the garage.  Even if people don’t wanna venture into doing a gear swap themselves, this gives you a good idea of what goes on when doing a rear gear swap. 

Thanks to AmericanMuscle as well for sponsoring this How-To feature.

Hechtspeed

 

Part 1: Do-It-Yourself 3.73 Gear Swap How-To

One of the first hot rod tricks a hot street car gets is a set of gears.  If your ‘Stang’s 8.8 inch rearend came from Ford with a set of 3.08′s or even worse, 2.73′s, the car was pretty much a DOG!  A set of 3.73′s, 3.90′s or even 4.10′s really wakes ‘em up.  Don’t throw away those 2.73′s though, you may wanna go for a run down the Salt.  haha

Here is “Calera Kid” himself doing a burnout at the now defunct L.A.C.R. drag strip.  This was taken at the “Hang Over Nationals” in 2002.  Anyone ever hit the Hang Overs at Palmdale?

“Sally” has run a best time of 12.85 seconds at 106mph at Famoso with 4.10′s.  Eventually the plan is to replace the stock ported E7 heads for the GT40P heads and the stock cam with a higher lift unit.  For now, a set of Ford Racing 3.73 ratio Ring and Pinion from AmericanMuscle.com might allow the low revving stock head/cam “five oh” motor to utilize the good torque with a set of 3.73′s.

If you’re a “do it yourself” hot rodder, here’s the step by step instructions for the swap.  Part 1 will focus on the removal of the 3.90′s currently in the car.  Also, we’ll point out some of the home-brewed rear suspension tricks.

First, get your car up on jackstands and remove the rear wheels.  Then remove  the two rear brake caliper bolts (13mm) on each side.  You can see at one point the stock calipers were painted red.  Also, note the stock catback.  Honestly, the Ford Small Block with the stock catback and mufflers when combined with a nice offroad x or h pipe is one of THE best sounding engines on the planet.

To finish removing the calipers, remove the two 15mm bolts for the caliper mounting bracket.  Note the Lakewood 50/50 rear drag shocks.  Yep, this SN95 Mustang ran 12′s with basically the stock suspension front and rear.  The front struts are stock, just unbolted from the top to allow more travel (yikes!).

Here’s the hall-effects sensor for the anti-lock braking system.  This needs to be removed.

To remove the sensor, simply remove the small bolt on the opposite side.

Next, you’ll want to drain the diff oil and remove the rear cover.  Sorry no pics of that step.

With the rear cover off you can see the ring gear.  Remove the spider gear shaft, its a 5/16″ socket.  In this picture you can see a hint of the Eaton posi (with carbon fiber clutches) unit that has over 100,000 miles on it.  This was one of the most important parts we installed that allowed ”Sally” to use the 8″ slicks and achieve a best short time (that’s the first 60ft for the drag noobies) of 1.72 seconds.

Push the axle in so that the C-clip can be removed.

Here is a view of the C-clip removed.

Now pry the diff and ring gear reward (out the back of the housing) and save the left and right shims.  Identify the shims as left and right, you’ll need them later and will want to keep left and right separate.

Hold the driveshaft flange and remove the pinion nut.  Dig this homemade tool utilizing a long pipe welded to a piece of steel sheet with holes drilled.  “Big B” the breaker bar is also a necessity.

Now you can tap the flange off and push the pinion out of the rearend.

Pull the pinion gear out of the rearend case.  Dig the ARP studs for added strength.  Also, note here the pinion spacer shim pack that was purchased separately.  This is not a crush sleeve type, which is what the Ford Racing gear set came with.  The spacer shim pack is much easier to work with compared to the crush sleeve type.

The pinion gear assembly with its spacer shim pack for bearing preload.

Now, you can remove the 10 bolts from the ring gear and then tap the ring gear off.

It is very highly recommended that you use a gear set with the shim and spacer setup.  The crush sleeve is a big pain to get the bearing pre-load just right.  The Ford Racing gear set from AmericanMuscle.com is a quality piece.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll show you the detailed instructions and pictures for installing the new 3.73 ring and pinion in the Mustangs 8.8″ rearend.

For those who’ve done their own gear changes, let us know what helpful hints you may have for removal and installation.

Hechtspeed

I’m a Car Guy! (not a web guy)

I’m a car guy, not a web guy.

Yes, I’ve spent the last 3 years making MyRideisMe.com and spending a huge portion of my limited free time on the computer, but it’s all been worth it. The community’s growing, sponsorship is growing and that means there’ll be more free stuff (see the freebies stories) and more content for everyone to enjoy.

That said, I had to spend some time in the garage this weekend to prove to myself, I am a car guy. My 1963 Falcon wagon’s been neglected so that MyRideisMe.com’s not. I’ve had a new radiator to put in for a while now and I have an Optima Battery to put in as well. My new yellow top’s still waiting, but at least I’ve got the radiator in!

Why’d it take me so long? It was a hard day’s work, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I have this tendency to over think to the point where it keeps me from getting started. Maybe that’s how I’m wired as an engineer. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I had to notch the top and bottom to “sink” the radiator into the support. I’m worried about fitting a fan with the long inline 6 I’m using, so I wanted the extra 1/2″ of space. The hole that I filled was cut out for a different radiator and without much thought for how it’d look. It looks better now. I just wish I was a better welder so I didn’t spend 10 minutes welding and 40 grinding.

I’ve done alot more to the car since my last Falcon Wagon Build update, but I haven’t written about it. I’ll load the build pics into my garage so you can see’m there.  (That’s what the garages are for!)

Here’s why I’m a car guy. That’s my son on the right. Just in the frame is the black Mustang hot wheel he’s racing and winning with. Who doesn’t love seeing their kids this happy!? Working on MyRideisMe.com combines what I love most. Cars and my family. Spending time with both is pure gold! Mix in buddies and their rides, and we’re all good.

These hot wheels races are every Friday night at Gilbert and Baseline in Gilbert, AZ. Click here for more car show information. It was $5 for 3 races and 5 cars. Not bad!

I’m off to publish some pinstriping pictures, then finish up our weekly newsletter, then work on the new look for MyRideisMe.com. Here’s hoping in all that, I don’t forget to look like this once in a while.

Get dirty working on your hot rod: Be a car guy. Then tell us about it. If I spend to much time away from my projects, make sure to let me know. There’s already enough non-car guys-car-websites out there!

-pikesan

Binary Engineering’s Evo – The Ultimate DIY

Are you a “do-it-yourselfer” (DIY) hot rodder?  Do you wrench on your own cars?  Well, this is a DIY’er to the max.  I came across pictures of Jared Drinkwater’s Mitsubishi Evolution on NASIOC.com, a Subaru enthusiasts forum of all places.  I’m a huge fan of the Mitsubish Evo for sure, but I was blown away at Jared’s engineering and build skills.  Jared is like the ultimate do-it-yourselfer.  He is a Mechanical Engineer by day, by night he engineers parts for his Evo, which he races on road courses.  Jared makes his own aero parts, race seat rails, fire extinguisher mounts, rebuilt his own engine (with a stroker kit and bigger turbo) and more.  Dig these pics of his ride and Binary Eng parts you can buy for your own Evo.

Jared’s “Binary Engineering” Mitsubishi Evolution in his new race livery.  Of course, he designed and applied these decals on his own.  Dig the front aero package, designed and built by Jared using lots of aluminum sheet and carbon fiber.

This was the stock front bumper.  Jared has added a tow hook (just in case he needs help getting out of a sticky situation on the track), aluminum airdam with a carbon splitter and carbon canards.  Aggressive, functional and homebuilt.  I dig!

Scope out the rear diffuser.  Again, aluminum and carbon fiber, a theme to most work on the Evo.

Carbon fiber canard with foam core.  Cool!  I love this stuff, having grown up around my dad working with fiberglass and carbon fiber.  There is a lot of work involved in composite material fabrication.

Wow!  Not sure exactly what Jared is doing here, I mean, obviously he’s doing some work with aerodynamics, maybe figuring out what angle to set the rear wing?  Jared, fill us in here buddy…

I love this engine bay with its military aircraft theme.  Very cool army green valve cover with the new displacement (2.3L) and engine code (4G63) making up the military call out #.  Cool idea!

How much power does it make with the stroker setup and bigger turbo?  Here’s the dyno sheet, click the image to see it bigger.  That’s 500hp and 450tq.  Wow!

Here’s Jared on the track doing his thing, carving corners.  With the 265 wide sticky meats and 500hp, I’m sure this thing is a blast to drive.  Check Jared’s site for videos of it on the track.

Binary Engineering Website

I hope you liked this do-it-yourself Mitsubishi Evolution.  I wanted to show you guys that the new kids on the block with their “tuner” Japanese cars are continuing the hot rodding tradition of going fast on a  budget.

Tell us what you think?  Wanna see more?

Hechtspeed

Hot Rod Fixed- It’s about time!

You don’t have to look that closely to see the dust piling up. My friends never let me forget what I already know. That ain’t right.

Good news is,  MyRideisMe.com is growing, but it’s at a cost to why I made it: The fun of driving and working on cars. No regrets, but just the same, I’m glad to have Bonnie, my 1927 Ford Roadster back on the road. So what was wrong?

• General laziness
  • Get out there son!
• Stripped out threads for 1 header bolt
  • I’ve never done a Heli-coil before

Sounds even more pathetic when I write it down.

Backing up some… A friend had a gift certificate for ceramic header coating that he couldn’t use, so knowing I’m a fellow car dude, he offered it to me. I needed to do something! If you’ve been following the build/update progress of my roadster for a while, you saw this post (Click to read it):

Home-built Header finish-ATF!

After applying the ATF (and after the smoke cleared…) the header was an amazingly cool gray-blue. I loved it and you couldn’t beat the cost! It looked pretty good for a while but after just a touch of rain, it needed another coating. Before long, the cool color turned to mostly a dull black. Perfect for Bonnie, but it never looked “coated” again. Enter 2009 Speed Week and my joyous rides on the salt.

Totally Happy:

Compared to: Weathered and Sad – Salt is bad for untreated metal.  Ya think? Compare that to what it looked like when it was new.

Since I’ll be back on the salt this year, I needed to do something with my header, so the timing of the freebie ceramic coating was great. When I removed the header, I found one of the header bolts just over finger loose and it wouldn’t tighten back up. Crap. I knew about Heli-coils, but I’d never used one. For some reason I used that as an excuse to put it off for WAY too long.

I thought about writing a tech piece on how to do a Heli-coil, but I found a couple easy to follow videos on youtube that I couldn’t improve on. Simply, you just drill a hole, tap it with a special tap, screw in the Heli-coil and you’re done! I had to grind off a tiny bit of the coil because it sat above flush with the head. Two seconds with a grinder and that was done. It all worked great and was way easier than I thought.

The new header’s in the top picture. I asked for flat black and the only black they had was this semi-gloss that has a funky yellow or gold-like tint to it. It’s almost like a yellow pearl in the black. I hope that burns off. Can you see it?

To cap things off with some tech, if you’ve ever tried tightening header bolts. It can suck.  Grab 2 or 3 wrenches of the size you need:

These wrenches aren’t a great example, but most times, the open ends will have a slightly different angle. When you’re to a point where you can only turn one flat of the bolt at a time, flip the wrench over and try again. If that doesn’t work, use a different wrench. That couple degrees of angle change on the head may be all you need to nudge the bolt over and grab it with the another wrench. Rinse and repeat.

A pretty simple tip, but if it weren’t for my dad teaching me, I wouldn’t think of that. Also, as I discussed with some other members, there’s alot more novices out there than experts. All are welcome here! If you’re an expert, let us know! Tech tips are a priority for the future of my weekend hot rodding killer… MyRideisMe.com.  Sign up and join us…

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