Felt like taking a break from fabrication today and doing some wrenching so I assembled the rear end. The Ford 9" rear end has 4 main components, the housing, the center section (pumpkin, pig, third member, center chunk, etc, etc), the axles and brakes. As you know from previous posts my housing is a Chassis Engineering fabricated 9" with old style Ford housing ends, Moser supplied the center section and axles, and the disk brakes are from Strange. A word of advice here when ordering your axles, have your brakes selected in advance as the Strange brakes come with brackets that need to go on before the axle bearings are pressed on.
Using some gasket sealer and a gasket I dropped the center section into place. I had to hit the hardware store for 10 3/8" 24 tpi stainless nylock nuts as they were not suppled with the housing. The housing did come with axle seals that get installed into the axle tubes. As I dont have a seal driver I used a big socket and buggered up one seal so I had to get another one from Napa. Lube the seals with some oil and insert the axles. Bolt them in with the T-nuts and brackets from the Strange kit, install the disks and calipers (both are directional) and voila, you're done.
I opted for the 4.11 gear ratio with a Moser steel spool and nodular iron case. In hindsight the extra $150 for an aluminum case would have been money well spent as the iron does weigh quite a bit. The 4.11 gear is the "pro" gear which uses harder metal than "street" gears and is made to hold up to a transbrake and high horsepower. Using the TCI calculator for RPM, assuming a tire size of 29.3", 135mph trap speed, 5% converter slip, the 4.11 gear gets me out the back door at 6684 rpm.
