Rear axle differential oil

It a while left until I will be able to break in the diff but to protect it agains surface corrosion and so on, I figured i sould put in some lube un the rear diff.

Rear axle final asssembly

Third member ready to install in the axle housing

Third member paint

Time for some paint!! my new best friend, 2 component urethane!

Third member & axles to axel housing mockup

Wanted to dryfit the third member and axles to the axle housing to double check that everything was ok before sealing it up with gasket on tube.

Clean out the housing from all dirt I could find, and not find, using compressed air, vaccum cleaner, rags, brake cleaner and also a hammer to tapp on the inside so that I would shake loose particles stuck in tight places.

Third member

The third member has been proffesionally built so I just wanted to document it before I put it in the housing .

Switching out the poor quality nuts, with the help of a friend.

The nuts that hold the rear drive shafts in place was some really poor quality, you can read about it here.

Well I got some new one with much better quality. Our dear friend wanted to help me at the best of her abillity.

Rear brakes, poor quality

I was putting the rear brakes and brake shields in place with all new hardware supplied by the axle supplier.....I suppose they have poor harware quality...???

Rear axle lower damper mount

These part went thru the zinc plating process aswell.

Rear axle spring perch welding

Spring perches tacked in place when mocked up in the frame with engine and trans in. Output shaft sat at 3.5 degress and I decided to set the rear axle pinion at 3.0 degrees. The perches ended up at 5.2 degrees of  of the mounting surface of the centre section. 

Back from work. I had a guy at work helping me out with the welding as my own mig welder was way to little for this.

Setting pinion angle, for spring perch welding

My little son is helping out lifting the bare block and flywheel cover into the frame and the new engine rubber mounts. This to get the correct angle of where the engine and trans tail shaft sits.

New rear axle, second mockup

Above the right Y hanger is mounted with the adjusted washers. Now I don't have any play radially or sideways, will be interesting to see how much total play there will be when everything is in place?

Leaf spring perch modification #2

When test fitting the lower damper and axle bracket I noticed that the increase in axle diameter from stock 2.5" (Dana 44) to 3" for the ford 9", made the U-bolts a bit short. So I decided that I would take about 6-7 mm out of the thickness off the spring perches.

Rear leaf spring perch modifications #1

When I ordered the new rear axle I was given a set of free spring perches, however I forgot to tell them what width i needed, so I got a 2.5" wide set and my rear leafs are only 2". This meant that the U-bolt couldn´t fit over these perches. 

Rear sway bar, mockup, first try

First mock up of the rear anti sway bar. I read the instruction and and was told that the sway bar should be located on the same side as the springs are mounted. So I test fitted everything with the sway bar on top of the axle and everything worked out great except for one thing. The axle bump stop will hit the sway bar exactly outside the sway bar rubber mount, when fully loaded. The other thing is that the frame mount is almost exact the same width as the inside of the spring so when loaded the spring will touch the frame mount. The only solution I can figure out is to mount the sway bar under the axle despite what the instruction says and flip the frame mount and elongate the strut in between. It will be quite s long strut, so to prevent it from (buckling) I figure I could switch the pipe section for one with larger outer diameter.

And one last thing I found the axle mounts so incredibly ugly so I will try to make some perches much like the spring perches and weld these to the axle, and if possible make another mount for the rubber bushings as well.

New rear axel first mockup

First mock up of the new rear axle. First thing to modify is, the new spring perches are to wide 2.5" hence the springs and U-bolts are only 2" wide. So the plan is to cut away 0.5" in the middle of the perches and weld the two halves back together. I know there are 2" wide perches available, but I already have these 2.5" wide ones so it just a bit of labour to get them right.

Rear axel

During the teardown I was fully confident that it was the original Dana 44 rear axel in place. Until one day I was out on the FTE forum and stumbled over a thread where they tried to identify a rear axel. So I started comparing pictures of my rear hump and the picture of a Dana 44. I was still convinced that i had a Dana 44 but there was "something" that wasn´t quite right but I couldn´t put the finger to it. I started searching for indentification pictures on the internet to figure out exactly what rear axel I had under mine. And voila suddenly there it was, It was a Dana 41 NOT a 44. The Dana 41 was originaly under a Ford F1 1948 to 1952.

This is a Dana 41 and nothing else