I've tried everything I cant cant get ta to go back on so I want to know if it safe to drive to garage an have them deal with it.

 

nope

try dropping the springs out, if your issue is lining it up with the diff

 

Not at all!

which end do you have off? Like naf said, dropping the springs can help. Its not too bad once you get the right combination. I prefer taking it lose at the front and leaving the back on, but either way it is doable, you probably just have it in a bind.

 

When you take out the torque arm the axle rotates and points up toward the floorpan. Rotate pinion down by putting a floor jack under the rear of the pumpkin and jacking up a little. You should have enough room to wrestle the thing back on.

 

And I also suspect you're being too gentle. You might have to get rough with it. It's not a precision piece of equipment. I always have to beat mine on with a hammer.

 

What these guys said about driving it.

In a word:

NO.

It's usually pretty eeeeeezy to put one of those in. First thing ya gotta understand is, that the springs are located BEHIND the axle, and therefore, if there is ANY SIGNIFICANT force on them (I.e. they have weight on them holding up the car), then they will DO THEIR DAMNEDEST to rotate the rear awkwardly. All that is needed to make this eeeeeeeeeeezy, is to take the force off of the springs.

Jack the car up on a LEVEL surface far enough to place a jack stand underneath the place on each side of the car where the front of the lower control arm bolts to the "frame", and the rear wheels are a few inches off the ground while the chassis is supported that way. Remember, jack stands - NOT stacks of bricks or such as that - under that place on the "frame". Raise the rear acoupla inches by the center of the pumpkin. Unbolt the bottom of the shocks from the axle. (might want to consider unbolting the top as well, and when the time comes to re-bolt them, bolt in new ones instead) Unbolt the brass junction piece for the brake lines, where the rubber line meets the steel lines, so that the junction block is free of the pumpkin (no need to unhook any of the lines). Let the rear end hang. (the springs might fall out... similar to the shocks except even more so, consider this as the perfect opportunity to set the old wore-out ones aside and pick up nice new ones when you get around to that step) Pull down on the pinion, and install the rear end of the TA to the axle. Put the springs back in their place (have your assistant hold them from falling out if necessary) and jack the rear back up by the pumpkin until the springs are just barely compressed a little bit, like, just enough to hold em in. Put a 2nd pair of jack stands under the axle tubes - NOT the pumpkin, NOT the spring mounts, NOT the shock mounts, NOT the sway bar, NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT - under the AXLE TUBES - at a height that holds them where the springs don't fall out. Install the front end of the TA to the fixed half TA mount and install the other half of the TA mount to that, noting as you do this that the force on the TA in this condition is SO SLIGHT that you can move it around by curling your little finger over it. Jack the pumpkin up enough to put the shocks back on and remove the 2nd pr of jack stands. Take the car down off the 1st pair of stands.

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention...

EFFFFFF abuncha "take" and "garage" and all that. You own an ANTIQUE. Get used to the idea that YOU and ONLY YOU are responsible for maintaining it. To reinforce this idea, like it or not, go to acoupla car shows and look at other ANTIQUE cars; and imagine in your head HOW MUCH MONEY it would take to PAY somebody else to do all that FOR the owner, and HOW LITTLE enjoyment (unless of course you consider writing LOTS of REAL BIG CHECKS frequently to be "enjoyment") this hobby would give you, if "take to garage" was how you kept your car up. LIKE IT OR NOT. That's just The Way It Is. Get used to it.

 

From experience, don't let the rear axle hang below what the shocks would allow. Too low keeps the axle too far forward, pushing the torque arm into the speedometer gear housing/VSS and it can break it off.

 

In the past few years I've started to use wheel stands instead of jack stands. As long as the wheels don't have to come off and the suspension can be loaded that is. Removing and reinstalling the torque arm with the car on wheel stands is pretty easy. Matter of fact I have the car on wheel stands now and I had to remove and reinstall the Torque arm from the transmission side and it took very minimal effort to do so and this was with the entire rear suspension still hooked up and loaded. You can make rear wheel stands for $20 from 4x4s and/or 2x4s.