Some of you know what happened to me on the trade. Long story short, the brackets never showed up, the assembly was worn the F out, and the passenger wheel bearing was shot. But I'm a glass half full kind of guy, and not a damn thing in this world can't be rebuilt so.. here we go.
I set out to snatch the 8.8 out of the car for prep work.
I purchased one of those harbor freight XT 1200lb ft impact and I have to say, it made the job a breeze. It is very well built. I removed the 8.8 for this behemoth.
IRS SWAP! I'm very excited to embark on my first IRS build. Done tons of PHB and solid axle builds. So this is a new adventure for me. The unit is an 03. It has low mileage axles in it (look to be too) and the pumpkin has recently been rebuilt with a 3.73. He included his bilsteins and H&R's to go along with it.
I got it home and started digging into it, and low and behold, found some issues. One, this thing is heavy as hell. Two, man these bushings were shot. Since I can't leave anything alone, I tore it down and did a thorough inspection.
As you can see, the diff bushing is absolutely murdered. No wonder he hated this unit. The ironic part is he had new poly front diff bushings in it. But not in the rear. The rear one is only like 40 bucks on MM's website. Crazy people will let things get this bad. The whole back side looks to be cover in gear oil (old) from a previous diff explosion. So I set out to clean EVERYTHING. Wire brush, degrease, repeat.
I cleaned my rear diff bracket up and got it ready to go.
After copious amounts of beers, the dog and the fiance being out of the house, and the roomie being moved out, i was able to focus and stare at the subframe for a bit. Eventually I said F it and remove the subframe bushings.
After all of that work, I started to structurally look at the IRS subframe. It was in good shape, but was beginning to show it's age. Luckily no broken tabs or bad stories, but the welds were all corroded and rusted. I put the die grinder to work with a wire wheel. After I coated all of the exposed surfaces with ford PM-13A anticorrosion rust preventative. It's almost like POR15, but a little runnier and satin.
I set out to snatch the 8.8 out of the car for prep work.
I purchased one of those harbor freight XT 1200lb ft impact and I have to say, it made the job a breeze. It is very well built. I removed the 8.8 for this behemoth.
IRS SWAP! I'm very excited to embark on my first IRS build. Done tons of PHB and solid axle builds. So this is a new adventure for me. The unit is an 03. It has low mileage axles in it (look to be too) and the pumpkin has recently been rebuilt with a 3.73. He included his bilsteins and H&R's to go along with it.
I got it home and started digging into it, and low and behold, found some issues. One, this thing is heavy as hell. Two, man these bushings were shot. Since I can't leave anything alone, I tore it down and did a thorough inspection.
As you can see, the diff bushing is absolutely murdered. No wonder he hated this unit. The ironic part is he had new poly front diff bushings in it. But not in the rear. The rear one is only like 40 bucks on MM's website. Crazy people will let things get this bad. The whole back side looks to be cover in gear oil (old) from a previous diff explosion. So I set out to clean EVERYTHING. Wire brush, degrease, repeat.
I cleaned my rear diff bracket up and got it ready to go.
After copious amounts of beers, the dog and the fiance being out of the house, and the roomie being moved out, i was able to focus and stare at the subframe for a bit. Eventually I said F it and remove the subframe bushings.
After all of that work, I started to structurally look at the IRS subframe. It was in good shape, but was beginning to show it's age. Luckily no broken tabs or bad stories, but the welds were all corroded and rusted. I put the die grinder to work with a wire wheel. After I coated all of the exposed surfaces with ford PM-13A anticorrosion rust preventative. It's almost like POR15, but a little runnier and satin.
