I have a complete 3.42 posi/disc sitting in my garage and the crappy 2.73/posi drum on the car.

I have the diff and posi fluid and some spray for the bolts. I also have the speedo & drive gears coming to me tomorrow.

How long is this gonna take?

How many bolts, roughly, are there?

When should I spray the bolts? I was gonna spray it today (Sunday) then again the night before the swap (maybe Friday night) and the morning I do (Saturday)? Is this a good idea or will it all dry out and rust again by the weekend, so just spray them friday night?

Should I keep my al. drums?

I would like to because of the weight savings (not much but hey) and because people complain about the rear discs being hard to change.

Thanks guys

 

Oh yeah, forgot to ask......

Driveshaft.....is there a special tool to remove it from the rear?
-and, do I need to totally remove the DS or just have it removed from the rear only?

Will I need a special size socket for any bolts? I will be doing this with hand tools.

 

if you were for some reason going to keep the drums.. then there wouldnt be much sense in swapping the rear end in the first place no?

 

what makes the rear disk hard to do??? The disk will also be lighter as well!

 

drums are lighter than discs

 

Id definatly spray it for as long as possible to free up the bolts. Since the llarger bolts crimp the mounting surfaces in to keep the rubber bushings stationary theyre really tight and a pain to get off, especially when rusted. Id say itll take at least a couple of hours to complete. Another thing is that the torque arm has to be the last thing to come off and the first thing to go on, otherwise the rear will spin around when you try to losen/tighten bolts. As long as nothing is rusted solid it wont be too bad.

 

AFAIK, the driveshaft rear universal joint is bolted to the diff yoke by 2 clamps. Just unbolt those clamps, push the driveshaft forwards slightly into the transmission, and there ya go REMEMBER TO MARK WHICH SIDE OF THE JOINT A CLAMP GOES ON, OTHERWISE YOU MAY END UP WITH DRIVESHAFT VIBRATION UPON RE-ASSEMBLY!

Mark.

 

I am doing the rear swap also for the first time.
So far I got the rear out the hardest part was
the 20 year old bolts and I had to cut the shocks
out they where bad anyway.

My panhard was bent and twisted so I had to buy another one.
I think this may have contributed to my rear end wearing
out before its time. I had a terrible wobble in the right wheel
and a horrible shaking drivetrain which eventually led me
to this point.

I have drums also and I had to swap my brake shoes and
hardware onto the other rear I also have aluminum drums
which are considerably lighter then the steel ones.
Also you have to take off the brake lines depending
on what came with you new rear.
ITs easier if the new rear has the brake lines including
the rubber line then all you have to do is hook that
one line up.
IF your going to run disk now so you have to
get a proportion valve to get more pressure for the calipers.
I was afraid of doing that so I stayed with a drum setup.
I probably would have a hard time with that and Im
in the street and its getting cold so I tried to make the job
easier.

I didnt get the drive gear yet and I should I have.
2.73 open going to 3.42 open.
Another problem I had was the fill plug for the differential
wouldnt come off and was already rounded out so I had
to fill the it up while it was still out of the car which is much
easier anyway but I would of liked to check the level just in case.

Its good if you have some help to get the rear out but
I did it by myself its heavy if you want to lighten the load
you can drain it and take the cover off and remove the axles
and drums, or you can leave the tires on and if you have
the car high enough you can roll it out with the torque
arm still attached.

best of luck
Dave

 

I just laid on the ground holding the nut with a big wrench and let the impact wrench do the work on the bolt heads. It would have been a lot more painful without that.

I did have one bolt the impact wouldn't take off. The one on one of the shocks. I used a very long, solid breaker bar and finally got it off. And I may be crazy but half of those nuts and bolts seemed to be metric and half standard.

 

Total number of fasteners to remove are.....18 I believe, not counting the the wheel studs.
Should take you no more than 4 hours if you haven't done it before.

We swap rear ends at my place like they are going out of style.

 

your going to need 7/16 wrench/socket,18mm wrench/socket,21mm wrench/socket,13mm socket.Probably something else I forgot.Definatly spray all the nuts/bolts a few times at least.Be careful when you pull the driveshaft from the rear not to drop the u-joint caps off the ends.

 

I got the rear in finally.
Unfortunately I had to take it out again the paper gasket
was wet at bottom.

 

I am literally stuck in the middle of a rear end swap. I have everything off except the trailing arm bolt is stuck on the drivers side, It spins (very hard to spin) and the nut is off the end but it is stuck in the rubber bushing. Any suggestions? Anyone else have this problem?

 

should just have to beat the heck out of it and it should come out, if you are planning to reuse the bolt, try not to mess up the threads.

maybe try prying against the threaded side while turning the head and see if it starts to thread itself out.

 

We had that issue on my friends car. The bolt was fused to the metal insert inside the bushing. this was on the body side so it was hard to get a good angle to hit it with a sledge. We couldn't get it out that day, but I think that he may have had someone cut the bolt off.

 

The idea that came to me last night was kind of like getting a balljoint off... putting a Cclamp with a large socket around the bolt and the cclap at the other end... pushing it out... hopefully this works, if not i dont know what else to do, cutting might not even work.

 

Well, I tried the C-clamp idea... all it did was bend a 9" clamp. now i have a broken tool, and a bolt fused in there. Any other ideas? I dont have a torch at my house and that is the only other thing i could think of.