Good Day,

I just wanted to post my experience with the POSI upgrade that I had done to my old 9 bolt rear.

Like a few others have done here namely KeyKey and GeneralDisorder. I decided to order up the TLVL carrier from SupaFspares in Australia. At the same time I ordered a Motive Gear 3.70 ratio ring and pinion gear and a complete bearing kit for the rear end w/shims and seals. The rebuild kit I ordered was from Ratech.

Installation went smooth. Unlike other builds like this I had no issues, everything went together perfectly. In other posts I saw that the pinion head had to be shaved down at the ends by a bit but in my case with the motive gear kit I put in, I had no clearance issues what so ever. I also had no problem with the carrier bearing caps either. the bearings I got with the Ratech kit fit perfectly.

I decided to take a chance on this because a few years back I put a fourth gen rear in the car and at the time I was happy with it. Brakes were definitely better. I also had Corvette wheels so it all worked. Last season I decided to sell the Vette wheels and go back to stock. A look that I haven't done it about 10yrs. Issue was the obvious one, wheels sticking out. (So I do have a forth gen rear for sale, 02 camaro rear with 3.42 gears complete with TA diff cover and cables needed to make e-brake work with thirdgen)

Swapped the rear ends out yesterday and test drove with the 9 bolt back in the car after 4 years and I have to say the 9 bolt feels way better, Its tighter feeling (I know there are a bunch of new parts in it). the 3.70 ratio feels nice and is not that noisy and most of all it is meant for the car and fits it right.

Just wanted to share my experience with this and reinforce what others have said. THIS IS THE BEST OPTION FOR THE 9 BOLT! The forth gen gear was a more affordable upgrade at the time since the old carrier in my 9 bolt was toast but in the end, had I know about this at the time I would have never swapped the rears out.

Just wanted to share my experience with this and hopefully inspire others to do this to their 9 bolts when their cones wear out.

Cheers,

 

Can you post part numbers?

 

All the part numbers are on the Ratech pages linked in my post on the Torsen 9 bolt upgrade:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tran...rg-warner.html

GD

 

Thanks for the info and sharing the pics! I didn't know about these carriers for the 9-bolt. I'll have to look into it.

 

It was a good upgrade and I thank the ones that did it before me.

Part numbers that I used were:

SupaFSpares: TLVL
Ratach kit : 332K (got this from Hawks)
Motive gear 3.70 ratio: MG-GM9-370 (got this from Hawks)

That's literally it for parts. Install went smoothly. No issue since install. I put about 100km on the car so far and its all good.

Cheers,

 

That's great! This is exactly what I was hoping for when I posted my thread, that many more would want to save their 9-bolts, instead of replacing their axle with a weaker one that doesn't really fit the car, or replacing it with an incredibly expensive axle that is way too strong and overbuilt for a stock car. I am happy that I could help and contribute with something to the community because I've learnt a lot of other stuff on this forum over the years.

 

So I wound up doing this upgrade as well with a new cover it seems the new cover should hold extra fluid but I only got about one bottle in before it started coming out the middle hole of the cover how much fluid has everybody else put in after install?

 

87_gta was wondering if you had to shim the differential as well. If so, could you give tolerances for backlash and spacing. I understand this a few years afterwards but, any insight will help, thanks.