A mustang guy at work and I were talking about our near future pony car builds, and he said he was going to be upgrading to a ford 8.8 inch rear. Apparently they are very common, and can be found in the explorer with a nice posi unit and were often loaded with 3.73 gears and disc brakes. He claimed that they had been proven to be stronger than the 12 bolt and lighter as well. anyone know if that's true, or what kinda trouble it would be to install one in a third gen?

I hate to think I'll have to spend BIG money to keep the back of my car together once there's some decent power going through it

 

huge pain to get it into a 3rd gen. the torque arm mount is what makes it hard to do

 

customblackbird did one recently, and other people here have. Yes the torque arm mount is the hardest part, but can be done. It requires proper welding technique to weld to the cast iron, so you will need help in that reguard if you dont have the means.

 

I got a ford 8.8 in mine. but it was from a crown vic.... has 3.55 posi that ive upgraded with a carbon fiber clutch kit found in the newer 2005 cobras. It does only have 28 spline axles tho. You can get the explorer 8.8s to work but you will have lots more fabricating. I believe the explorers have an offset rear end (pumpkin isnt centered like our cars/most cars) which requires shortening/lengthing the axle tubes. this will require new tube ends as well which can only be done by a rear end fabrication shop due to special jigs etc.

the crown vic is what i found to be very close to the 3rd gen width... its right between the 3rd and 4th gen rears in length. aprox 1.5" wider on each side over a 3rd gen so a total of 3" wider than stock. The crown vic rear does also have the large 11.5" disk brakes which are sweet and much bigger than stock.

The swap was a real pain... most of the work came from fabricating a tq arm mount on the pumpkin (i didnt want to weld to the pumpkin so i made a slip fit tq arm design) and alot of time to transfer the brackets on the axle tubes over from stock. i ended up making my own brackets the 2nd time around bc it was just easier. U can do a search for my thread if u want in drivetrain section

 

Any diff can be made to work with enough time, money and skills but by the time you're done all the fabrication required to make it strong and safe enough, it can be a lot cheaper to just buy an aftermarket bolt in diff for the third gen.

 

X2... which is the point i was trying to get at. After its all said and done I prob had about 400 in the rear (setup, posi clutches, support girdle, seals etc). then about 150-200$ in the steel for the tq arm/tq arm mount with rod ends etc. then about 130$ in the brakes (new rotors, calipers, pads).

It was cheaper for me to do it this way but thats cuz i did all the fabrication except setting up the gears.