Dirtbik3r

Underside Before and After's.

AFTER:



BEFORE:

4MULA88

Looks 10 times better

Dirtbik3r

Floorpans:

The floorpans were totally rotted out. I have been making posts on this message board containing pictures of the rust problems I was having. If you would like to see them, goto https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=223594 . After I grinded and hacked away at the rusted locations, I took pieces of cardboard and cut them out to the size of the patch i needed. Next, I traced that outline(of the cardboard) onto the sheetmetal and cut them with a brand new pair of shears i picked up. I then welded in the patches and grinded most of the welds down. After the grinding was done, I gave the underside a layer of por15.

Rearend and Rear Suspension

The rearend is a Ford 9" with 3.89's. Since I bought it off ebay, i did not know it was not a posi. But for now, I wanted my car on the road so I put it on anyway. I gave the rearend a coat of por15 as well as a set of spohn adj. traction bars(lower control arms) and a spohn adj. Panhard bar.

Sway Bar Brackets:

I then came to my next dilemna. How was I to attach my stock style swaybar to this huge rear end? I found out that spohn sold a kit specifically for this. The kit came with U bolts, nuts, and long bolts for the sides of the sway bar that connect to the floorpan area. I didnt think I needed to get new bushings because I already had polyurethane ones. So stupid me had to fabricate up the stock brackets. I welded 1/4" rolled steal to both sides of the bracket to lengthen it. Then, I slotted two holes into it with my milling machine. So, I goto attach everything and find out that the spohn U bolts were not long enough. I picked up two huge U bolts from a local car parts store(Big A) that measured 1/2" thread diameter. These things were heavy duty alright but had extra length to work with. I reslotted my bracked and bolted everything up.

U Joint

The final process in getting the rearend to fit was to a new U joint. I couldnt believe the tough time my hydrolic press had in getting out the old platic? factor joints out. The U joint snapped in half before it came out of the driveshaft slots. I then went back to Big A and asked which conversion U joint i would need to mate up with the ford 9" yoke. I gave him the measurements. He only needed two, the width from notch to notch on the yoke and the diameter of the joint holders. Also, I didn't realize that one big difference between the gm unit and the ford unit is that the ford yoke uses U bolts while the Gm yoke uses a bolt and nut approach. This minor detail actually took me a while to figure out.

But here is my up-to-date progress and for those of you wondering, im throwing in 31 splines and a posi carrier(third member) come summer time. Also, my car goes in this week to get pained. I can't wait!

As of now, I'm trying to figure out how to attach my parking brake cables to my drum break on the 9". You can read up on it at https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=233365 .

It would have made it a lot easier to do this sway if I had a list of parts than I would need. When doing the ford 9" swap, it would be a good idea to get the following:

-Conversion U joint
-Spring and shock perches(if it does not have them)
-U bolts that fit the ford yoke
-Get a new panhard bar, the factory one sucks
-Might want to get new control arms also
-Your going to need a new tq arm bracket.
-Heavy duty(BIGGER) sway bar bracket adaptors. Spohn has them.
(anything I forgot I'll add later)

v8nate92RS

Lookin much better man! You should for sure replace that rusty exhaust with a nice Flowmaster American Thunder 3" with the stainless tips like mine