Hi, check out this pic, the silver one is my old one-legged 2.93 10 bolt.
The black one is my Dana60 axle of a dodge W200 pickup (4.10)
soon a lockright will be added.

-The diff itself is 1 inch, or so longer so the wheels will be a bit more to the rear of the car, but with not too big tires, i think i can make it work.

-All the brackets for the LCA's, springs, shocks and swaybar have to be transferred from the old to the new axle.
Lots of measurement!

 

Looks pretty heavy

Full floating axles too? Damn, how much torque are you planning on putting through that thing?

You should be able to do it, but like you said take your time and take LOTs of measurements and pics if you can.

 

That's gonna be a disaster. Look how wide it is. Gonna be freakin heavy and will result in hp loss to the wheels turning that over. What are you going to do for wheels? Sell that and buy something alot closer to fitting under your car, or upgrade the 10 bolt.

 

with the power of welding, you can biuld anything you have the patience for

 

Maybe he's gonna put a fifth wheel in the hatch area

I'm really curious what your setup is gonna be though robert, that rear is a monster :hail:

 

You should weigh them both and see how much the difference is...You can make it work.

 

If you do it you might want to look into buying/renting a little bigger welder for the control arm and spring mounts. Those need to be very stong welds.

 

well, i have some serious money problems, so a better welder is out of the question.

the axle isnt THAT wider, on the picture the 2 axles arent straight at eachother.(spelling)

i know it is overkill, but i dont have the $$$ for another axle or axle-upgrade.
The 10 bolt is totally wasted, the gears are so worn out, it makes enough noise to wake up the whole town in the morning.

And i converted this 10 bolt axle to a discbrake axle, BUT i welded the caliperholder (disc) upside down, so i had to put the caliper upside down too!

this axle is wasted, trust me.

i bought the dana60 for 100 bucks, it has NO c-clips and the Powertrax Lockright is an easy install.

Who knows when a huge engine will enter the enginebay, and then im glad i allready got a killer axle mounted...right?

 

I allready ordered a pair of rims with the bolt pattern for this axle, it has an 8 bolt pattern

I ordered 2 rims with the biggest backspacing i could find, so the tires arent sticking out too far.

I ordered 15x7 inch rims with 4 1/2 backspacing.

i will keep posting info and pics of this transformation.

BTW: im thinking of cutting of those huge drumbrakes, because im gonna disconnect the rearbrakes anyway.

Ill use only the frontbrakes.

 

Thats not a good idea for 2 reasons:

1. You will toast your front brakes in no time flat.

2. What would you do if you ever lost your front brakes?

If you want nasty burnouts or something, just get a linelock. I've seen them go on ebay for ~$25 used.

Just my

 

You gonna have some serious life longevity problems if those welds break while traversing down the tarmac my friend.

 

yeah, i thought about the brake-thing, but i noticed that if there is a leak in one of the brakelines, all the brakes wont work anymore.
So if the frontbrakes fail, the rear will also, so i would be dead anyway.

its not because i want to do massive burnouts or what so ever, but the brakes on the dana60 are pretty worn, and i want to get rid of those heavy drums.

 

Good luck and hope you don't kill your self or somebody else on the road.

 

The front and rear brake systems are completely isolated within the master cylinder, so if your front system goes out you will still have rears. Or vice versa. If you look in the brake reservoir, you can see the two seperate inlets for either system.

You can do as you wish obviously, I'd just hate to see another person crash and burn over something so easy to remedy.

 

i say ditch the dana. you say that money is tight but you already spent $100 on the axle and who knows how much on new wheels plus, you gotta HOPE that you can get everything welded up like it needs to be... i say, sell the dana, make some money on it, sell or return the wheels and use that $300 or so to put new gear and bearings in in the 10 bolt and be safe! if you can weld, why don't you grind off your old welds on the caliper plate and put it on the right way so that isn't an issue anymore.

 

Hhahahaaa that 60 makes that ten bolt look like a twig Get yourself a 8.8 mustang axle it`ll fit better if you ever finish it, make sure we see some pictures

 

I must say this dana really is BIG, even my father laughed his *** off about this project.

1 more reason to finish this project.
The 2 rims i ordered were damn cheap 27.95 bucks each, some ugly white 15 inch rims.

i allready finished one side of the axle (lca bracket, spring bracket and shock bracket)

only problem is that my driveshaft has to be over 2 inches shorter!

"Where's the hacksaw"?

 

"SURE! If you can't do it, no one can!" 3 30.00%
"Pfff, that's gonna be one big, suicidal, mess!" 7 70.00%


Hmmm, 70% thinks, im gonna die within a very short time... ooh well...

Life sucks anyway... at least i die in a camaro....

 

some ugly white 15 inch rims.
I allready ordered a pair of rims with the bolt pattern for this axle, it has an 8 bolt pattern

that'd look good parked in just about any trailer park in the country. have you worked out the torque arm yet?

 

Can we just change the name of this site to: www.junkyardwars.org

Why not disconnect the front brakes also, and just add a Flinstone hole in the floor pan.

*** D**n this is a pathetic project. LMAO!

 

Best idea you've had yet. Please just be sure you don't take anyone else with you.

 

okay, you made me reconsider the brake thing.

Therefore i decided to keep the drums on the axle, and when i testdrive the car when the axle is mounted and everything works well, ill rebuild the brakes and connect them.

About that torque arm... it needs some adjustment but it wont be a problem.

All the welds will be good and the brake thing is covered too, so please, have a little confidence in me.

 

why is it pathetic? am i the first to install a dana60 axle???

you must admit, if in the future (and it will) a bigger engine finds its way in the enginebay, the axle is covered.

If i buy another axle or i rebuild the old axle, i still have a problem after a much bigger engine. then i have to do it all over again.

 

my dad's s-10 has the same 7.5" 10 bolt in it and we put a sbc 350 in it. its a pretty healthy motor and we've run slicks on it at the dragstrip with 4.10 gears in it and have had no problems with the axle. just food for thought. if you go through with the dana, good luck and i hope it works well for you.

 

That project is gonna turn out like crap....

 

looks like you've got your work cut out for you, just take it slow and do it right.

 

Well, it really shouldn’t be any heavier then a comparable ford 9” and is a more efficient gear design. Based on your description, it sounds like it’s almost identical in width to a 4th gen axle, that being the case I probably would have drilled the hubs for a 5 on 4.75” pattern and possibly swapped brakes for something more conventional or even drilled them to match, and then you could run 4th gen wheels which wouldn’t look as bad and fit more appropriately sized tires.

With that little welder I’m hoping that you’re running some decent flux core (IE, no –GS).

I didn’t vote since from what I can tell, it’s very doable, but the way you’re approaching this it’s likely to become a mess… or at least seriously ugly.

 

well, the difference between your dad's s=series and our f-bodies is the amount of weight on the back end of the vehicals. regardless of wether or not he is running sticky tires, that rear will take more abuse in a front weight biased car.

 

you're right but it does/can still abuse it. but, reagrdless or weight transfer, it hooks up and has a lot of torque being transfered through it. so i don't see the weight transfer being TOOO big of an issue on this subject. although i do know it does make some difference.

 

Axle is finished!!!

all the brackets are on and i rolled the axle under the car and put the wheels on.
The tires wont stick out (thank ***) and it looks pretty decent.

I want to paint the wheels and the axle that is sticking out of the wheel dark grey.

1 thing though, connecting the torque-arm was a real pita, i had to cut the tq-arm a little and welded it to the diff.
I didnt had any room on the diff. to fabricate some sort of bracket.

I shortened the (steel) driveshaft with 6cm and i had to change the yoke to make it fit the axle, but it should work now.

Cant wait to test this baby!

PICS WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY...(tomorrow)

 

And rolling-robert was never heard from again.

 

Did you shorten the driveline your self?

 

where's the pics?

 

I did a swap on my c1500 truck kinda like that. Stock the truck had a 8.5" 10 bolt in it that i grenaded in a month. So I swapped in a 10.5" 14bolt in. I sure as heck wouldn't do something like that on a camaro tho. A full floater with hubs looks alright on a truck but not on a car.

 

Well, i placed the axle under the camaro.
i connected the tq-qrm, Lca's and springs, and wheels

it looked pretty decent, but i noticed that the rightwheel is sticking out a bit and the left wheel is sitting in the wheelcase just like the stock rims.

Im absolutely positive the diff. is exactly in the middle so probably the diff is a bit out of the middle of the axle (4x4?)

doesnt matter, if it works it works...

 

Here you can see the 4 bolts i welded on the yoke.
And the brackets and tq-arm i had to weld on.
It was too much work too fabricate a strong bracket to bolt the tq-arm to the diff.

 

here is the driveshaft i had to cut 6 cm out off, hope i welded it straight. will find out soon enough,

the other pic, i had to make those metal caps a bit shorter to fit the dodge yoke, had to shorten all those tiny needle bearings to one by one

all i have to do now is to connect the driveshaft and shocks and tighten some bolts here and there.

WISH ME LUCK!

 

i can't believe you cut the DS and rewelded it, the tube even, without any sort of fixtureing. i'll be willing to bet any launch above idle will break the weld, or the metal around the weld. i sure as hell wouldn't be posting pics of it, or admiting to doing it.

 

What do you mean you can't believe it? Didn't you see all of the other dumb *** half-assed engineering performed in this mutilation?

 

should i weld an extra metal strip around the shaft?

 

That shaft is ruined. The proper way to shorten it would have been to cut (grind) through the factory weld on either end and slide the end yoke out of the shaft. You can then cut off however much you need to remove from the shaft in one cut. Slide the end yoke back in the shortened shaft, but it on a balancer, make sure it's straight, and weld it back on. Then balance it.

 

Man I hope you have some insurance. I don't even think they'd mount that d/s up to balance! Has the word 'research' ever entered into your thinking?

 

This ranks up there as one of the most stupid DIY-Mods I have ever witnessed here. I'm not necessarily talking about fitting the Dana 60. I'm talking about what YOU did. My goodness boy - that's a freaking hack job. Furthermore, it's a horrible hack job that is completely unsafe. Do you have a brain? If so - please start to use it before you kill yourself or somebody else. My only conclusion is that you are a retard.

Tim

 

1) nice project.
2) you're gonna die. If you kill anyone I know, I'm going after your relatives.
3) just get the shaft pro built from denny's and have your other bracket welds inspected for a second opinion. Get (or make) an adjustable panhard and fix the LCA locations and it will center. You really needed a jig for trueness. have an alignment shop check it maybe? angular based heat stress on the axle splines or bearings could cause disaster too.
4) Don't prove Trax right. I don't think you're a retard.. but you could make yourself into one with that driveshaft.

GL

 

Oh my sakes, this just keeps getting better and better! Your driveshaft is absolute junk. Have you ever seen the amount of precision work goes into making or modifing a driveshaft? It has to be fixured up on a lathe and turned between centers, runout has to be checked and adjusted, then welded and rechecked and adjusted. Then it all has to be balanced. That thing is gonna shake like a **** until something breaks.

There is no way you could have got lucky enough to have it run somewhat true. Think about what happens when you tack weld two pieces of metal togther.....ever feel how much the weld will pull as it cools down? Now think about what happened when you welded the shaft up.

 

Potential Darwin Award recipient in the making

 

More like GIve it to him HANDS DOWN. I don't think Ive seen anything worse. The DS is just iceing on the cake...

 

Hey now, I called that **** on him two weeks ago.

The only thing better than the driveline is the hand made custom U joint. I can't believe he would actually put pictures of that up for people to see.

 

This is awesome!

Are you sure you live in the Netherlands not Poland?

 

He has to drive it first with fatal consequences before being considered for any award!!