Yeah, so the pictures really don't do justice to how much mass I've concentrated in here.
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But they'll hafta do for now, because I'm NOT DONE YET... if you think this is overkill, please suspend your judgement...
Okay, the next tasks that need to be done:
Make the second wheel...
--Cut the wheel's center out,
--Grind out the debris,
--Locate and tack weld the new center in
--Triple-check, and finish weld it
--Scrub them clea, and apply paint.
Cut all the axle gussets,
--Locate and tack them in place
--Triple-check, and finish-weld them
Make the axle shafts
--Rough cut the right one (left already done)
--Cut the clip shoulders off inside of each axle shaft
--Rough cut plates, bore holes, tack to mandrel, locate and drill holes, cut OD
--Cut axle shaft OD to fit hole
--Assemble in-situ and weld
--Clean up the welds, and apply suitable paint.
Remove the old seals, bearings and races from the hubs, and scrub them clean... clean up the surfaces and bolt threads.
Replace the hub bearings and seals
Make gaskets for the axle tube-to-transaxle surface..
Most of this is pretty obvious, but I'm gonna explain something because I think someone will wonder why...
...Why cut off the clip shoulders??
The Mustang semi-floaters were originally held in by c-clips, eliminating them opens up more depth for splines to act upon, and provides more end-clearance for the axle shafts to move around under load. One might ask why it'd matter, after all, the axle shafts were fine before, right?
The full-floater axle has a hub that rolls on the axle's outer TUBE. It is, for all practical purposes, totally separate from what goes on inside the diff housing.... except for the rotation of the axle shaft.
The axle SHAFT bolts to the face of the HUB. The other end splines, are engaged into the side-gears of the differential.
In the Mustang's semi-floating setup, that shaft not only provided torque, it SUPPORTED the weight of the vehicle, and also restrained the wheel's position against whatever skew arose from driving conditions. The ONLY thing that determined the wheel's lateral position, was the shaft's ability to slip INTO, or OUT OF the side-gears' splines. To keep the shaft from slipping OUT of the axle, the circlip captivated the axle. To keep the axle from moving INWARD, the end of the axle would land against the differential spider gears' crosspin. Remember, when I took the Mustang axle apart, I had to remove the little crosspin retainer bolt, and drive the crosspin out of the differential, in order to get the circlips to release, because the circlips, once installed, slid outward, into a recess in the inner face of the side gears. Basically, as long as the axle shafts couldn't move INWARD, the circlips could NOT fall out. Aside from that, the length of the axle shaft was TOTALLY irrelevant to the differential, and as long as there was a bearing in the axle tube at the other end, everything was fine... if the axle grew LONGER, for some reason, it would simply stick out a wee bit longer at the far end, and nothing else would matter.
In THIS case, however, the axle shaft NEEDS to 'float' in the differential... because the HUB FACE... might move a little. The hub spins on bearings, and it needs a little clearance to prevent it from binding. This is why I'm cutting off the shoulder. Besides, I don't need circlips here... the bolts on the outside of the hub take care of all that.
Yes, I'm a Mad Scientist... but I'm usually happy, even when things ain't goin right.