Well, the lock bolt holdng the pin in that holds my axleshafts in place on my old '86 3.42/open/drum axle snapped. It snapped off about 1/4 inch inside the open carrier... so that axle is basically junk to me. That leaves me with a busted '84 posi (eaton gov-lock) and one last idea.

I'll visit a boneyard tomorrow, grab any 'ol drum or disk brake rear, and throw it under my car. But, since I don't want to write this off as a total waste of time and energy... say I get a drum brake axle from a 90-up car- the axleshafts with 28 splines, instead of the pre-90 axleshafts with 26 splines. I figure I can use that drum axle under my car for now, and later on, schedule a few days to put the drum axle's axleshafts inside my '84 axle, and put the SLP takeoff posi into the '84. But, one question:

Is there any difference between the two axleshafts? Is an axleshaft from a DRUM rear the exact same as an axleshaft from a DISK rear? (I'm ignoring any spline changes.) I could've sworn that someone mentioned the flanges were different thicknesses... but I'm pretty sure I"ve also heard that they're exactly the same!

Quick help's appreciated; looks like I lose a day of work tomorrow.

Thanks!

 

If you've got the 82-88 disc brakes, the rotors won't fit over the drum axle flange. You'll need to grind the outside diameter down. Once you do that, you'll be fine.

For the car I did, we put the rear on jackstands and ran the motor in 1st gear while grinding on the axle with a bench grinder. It took about 3 hours to do both sides, but it did work. Since we had a torsen posi, we had to use a crowbar to wedge the other axle so it couldn't turn (you'd have to do that with an open diff as well).

The rear in question was an 86ish disc 3.23 rear with a blown posi. We replaced the posi with a Torsen, grabbed the 28 spline axles out of his original 92 2.73 drum rear, and ground them down. Works great.

And for all you guys saying it would never work, the car is still running fine and braking great! Of course, the ebrake isn't working right (damn calipers), but I guess you can't have everything.

 

Great! Thanks for the info!

Oh and hey, you want rear brakes? Look at my old message from the suspension/chassis/brakes board for everything you need. The message is titled "I fixed my '84 rear discs- and they WORK! Also used V12 Phoenix Injector to bleed!" and can be found by clicking here: https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...threadid=78725

'Course, looks like I'll be going back to drums for a while, dammit...

[edit] Just, don't do what I did: After you rebuild the rear calipers, make sure that there's no drag on the e-brake cables. I think that's why my posi died. When I went underneath, turned out that my rear calipers were always dragging, and that must've confused the hell out of the posi.

 

Yeah, I saw that post a while back. That's what prompted my buddy to go ahead and order the recall kit for his new rear .

Hopefully the Torsen/3.23 axle behind a 700R4 will hold up better than yours did.

 

It kind of makes me smile that I can say my V6 blew a posi; too bad the Eaton Gov-lock was a poor design to begin with- but hey, not everyone I talk to has to know that!