Volvord get a skinny butt... Axle Narrowing!

Hi Guys and Gals,

Finally starting working on the fun car again, it's so depressing when I look at the whole project so I've decided
to tackle it one piece at a time, this installment is the back axle.

The car is now essentially back-half'd and 4 linked but I'm not really happy with the overall stance, and to make a long story the rear axle is too wide for the wheels I'm using. Fortunately the moser shafts have more than enough spline length to allow me to hack an inch out of the axle either side.

I borrowed a jig that a friend used for a Ford 9" axle when he narrowed his axle, I need to machine some of it to make it work in my application (Ford 8") but after a couple of hours at a friends on the lathe I had the necessary components to begin the sawing.
Hopefully gonna get this finished up during the week.

Here are some pics I took, unfortunatley they're only camera phone quality.

Original crappy welded bearing housing


Massive brackets, lol, they'll be perfect when I get 31" tyres, too bad mine are only 24.5's lol.






Half of the axle narrowing kit, that 40mm by 124cm bar sure is heavy, lol.


Axle, carrier and jig.




Anyone seen the Evostik, eek!!!


Progress finally, I've got the joys of making a completely custom front suspension set up next, woot!
Thanks for looking, opinions welcome and as usual I'm dying to know what kind of random crap you guys notice in the background.
Laters
Nick

Cool man, the alignment bar certainly speeds things up.

So you are re-doing the bearing housing welds, right?

Rolling forward

With such a huge project a bit at a time is the only way to roll. It's going to be awesome Nick. How's the 242GT doing? Is it your daily driver?

Kenny, That bar makes things hella easy, I've chopped the bearing housings off and I'm gonna spin them up in a lathe to remove the 25mm from each side that should remove all the old pidgeon sh*t welding that was on there before if my measurements are right(that right there is a damning statement! Lol)

Believe it or not the one housing was off by about 1.5mm and it was welded up originally by a professional shop that have lots of experience with narrowing american axles about 2.5 years ago. The 4 link brackets were welded on about 18months ago though I think that may have caused the case to move a little.

Dave, 242 is fine at the moment well despite needed some attention to the body work getting a couple of orange patches along the bottom of the door, when the weather dries up I'm gonna sand down the lower inch of the door treat it and repaint the door bottoms, it has so many touch up's on the paint anyway mine can't make it any worse. It's really difficult to make progress on the non-running shell when there's a perfectly good 13's car that could be made much faster with a little money and lots of time but at least I can enjoy progress made on the volvo. In the long it'll be worth the effort I hope to skip the teen's with the escort, it should be best part of a 1000lb lighter(well maybe 800).

Laters
Nick

That's a fairly large skinnybutt.

neat !!!

that alignment bar with bushings is slick....

going to sandblast/paint and make the housing purty???

projects

I know what you mean with the rust Nick. Here in NJ I'm going to be repairing the rust on my 82 turbo for the second time. Lots of repairs to do but I'd rather do it to my car that I've enjoyed for all these years than start with another unknown.

The Volvord will be well worth the time and effort. 1k lbs less is fantastic.

Mmmmm.. long arm 4 link. Squat-n-hook.. I think John and I were just talking about this the other day. I like the idea of using a quick change pumpkin but not using a 9".