Ford 9 inch anyone? Again, not a lot of photos because I didn't have a good camera, or phone, or camera phone, or phone camera, whatever.
Narrowed and ready to go. New 3.50 gear with rebuilt 31 spline Trac-Loc, new bearings, new axles.
The rear disc brakes? Remember Cash-for-Clunkers? The 'yards were full of gold if you were willing to do the work. I snagged these off a '93 Z28 for $50. That included everything, even the mounts, which I modified to work with the 9" housing. I redrilled the rotors to 5x5 bolt pattern on the Mill at work. (not yet redrilled in the photo)
Here I am drawing up spacers for the bearing plates and then I machined them on the CNC router at work. FYI - a CNC router is a great thing. I have used it countless times for brackets and such.
I dug around and found some more photos!
Here is the process I used to plug the socket hole in the axle flanges prior to redrilling them for a truck. As shown they had a 5 x 4.75 and 5 x 4.5 pattern.
Turning the plugs.
Test fitting. They had a nice slip fit. Not too loose and not too tight.
Using the finest old jeans available I shielded the bearings from weld spatter.
Welded up, cooling and ready to be turned down on the lathe.
With the rearend finished I started on cleaning up the 5.3L.
I should mention that by this time was was January 2011.
The photos and text read fast, but it wasn't. At this point I had owned the truck almost two years,
I hadn't driven it in one year and I thought the end was in sight. Ha ha ha ha ha!!! I say this for anyone that find themselves in that situation.
Stay the course! It will work out and when it does it is glorious!