axle truss?

[unoleisu]

Would you mind posting a pic of your front cover? maybe I can get some brain juices flowing on that idea....

 

[59bisquik]

 

[unoleisu]

Thanks 59 bisquick, I appreciate it. Nice chin gaurde. I can see that would be fairly easy to reproduce. Probably the hardest part there, would be the mounting plate that bolts on over the cover. If I use the cover itself as a template, I should be able to make it fairly easily. I'll give that some thought. I was thinking about making a gaurde that bolts to the bottom holes on the cover, but has a "v" shaped brace that wraps up over the cover and bolts to the truss. Still toying about that idea...

 

[86 slo-vo]

welding the tubes in your back yard can do little to no good at all. welding mild-steel tubes to a cast-iron housing requires the proper use of pre-heating in the right spots or else it just makes the weld (and the surrounding metal) more brittle than it even was to begin with. i wish i had a dollar for every mustang guy around here who just blasted a bead around his 8.8 tubes. just to tear the diff apart right there before even hitting the 60-foot line at the drag-strip

lol nice touch on neg repping me because you didnt like my comment about what i said.

ive welded up atleast 40-50 8.8's under mustangs, some under 1Khp cars and never had a problem. the center sections are CAST STEEL which means you can weld to them but i guess you know more then everybody else on the internet.

 

[59bisquik]

Damn Slo-Vo!! Thats nice! :icon_thumby::icon_thumby::icon_thumby:

 

[86 slo-vo]

Damn Slo-Vo!! Thats nice! :icon_thumby::icon_thumby::icon_thumby:

that one went under an 800hp turbo 03 cobra. thanks man

 

[unoleisu]

Ok, so here is my bolt on 8.8 diff gaurd. I used what I had laying around, so it isn't pretty, but I think will work for awhile. I cut and used a 8" ID pipe with 3/8 wall thickness.
Originally I made a couple of horrizontal cuts (not all the way through) to allow the 5" wide strip to flex out so it would span the diff cover hump. When I welded those cuts up afterwards, I failed to clamp the whole thing down, and after adding the side support "hoop" as well, it warped. Soo....... I had to cut it all the way through one of the horizontal welds I just did, flexed it down, (this time bolt it in place) and did short one inch welds (letting it cool in between welds) using a piece of steel as a filler in the new gap. It's strong, but not as clean looking as I planned. sigh.

 

[unoleisu]

OK, done deal. Here is the finished and installed 8.8. Also the connector I made for the park brake lines, using the Explorer 8.8 brake lines.

You can see I used all threads and welded e-brake line connectors to them. This allows me to adjust each line individaully. I also welded brackets on the frame supports to hold the P brake lines. I found that after installing and hooking everything up, that the parking brakes themselves were way out of adjustment, so I had to dial them in, like any other drum brake, with the little adjustment wheel in the drum.