Well with less than 50 miles since the complete brake job the OL 46 is sitting on blocks again. It appears that the Pinion bearing for some reason, no 'hotrodding', just gave up the ghost at 5MPH and wasted the rearend. When it went I thought the car had a bomb go off under it. I originally thought it was the ****** until I drained the rearend and found lots of metal, BIG CHUNKS, coming out the drain hole. So here is the question; What rear end complete housing will fit under the car? 42 to 48 or earlier and what about gear ratios for certain years? I'd like to keep it as tall as possible I am completely ignorant on this one, HELP. I see a few for sale here & because of my lack of knowledge on this subject I need your help. Thanks, Roger
Well i know exactly how you feel. smoked some Banjo in my time too. The best replacement i have found and im sure others as well, is the ever trusty 9 inch Ford. Now for for the correct width, sixties Bronco's have the closest measurement that I have found. Mustangs of the same era are similar in width but do not have the correct axle bolt pattern as the early wheels to be used. The Bronco has the correct "Large" Ford pattern to facilitate those wheels. As far as bracketry and mounting, its time to get creative. Ratios are easy to get from most vendors and wont break the bank. Happy hunting.
Any 42-48 Ford p***enger car rearend will bolt right in and you'll stiull have your other one for brakes and other spares. They aren't that hard to find and easily distinguishable because of the short radius rods.
Or...any center section from 1939 on up will bolt directly in place of yours. In order of commonness, the most available ratios are 3.78, 4.11, and 3.54. Lots of other ratios from 3.23 or so into the 5's existed from Ford and aftermarket.
I PM'd a guy last evening that has two for sale so I'm hoping to hear from him soon. I don't know the year's of each rearend he has but one can be hopeful and he's only 350 miles away. I have the whole thing out of the car and also need to know how to take it apart correctly. Any tech tips would be helpful from this site. Thanks, Roger
Pop off the hubs with a good puller, the really fun part...remove all bolts from banjo. Keep them and do not use a tap on holes! Extra tight threads there. Pull off axles, remove snap ring near front of driveshaft, pull torque tube. Grind heads of pins and drive out to remove driveshaft and sleeve from pinion. Save left and right gasket fragments to measure, but they will probably be the standard thickness...these gaskets set gear lash and carrier preload. Yours has probably dis***embled itself, but normally a press or puller is required to remove pinion and its bearings. Choose replacement banjo by ratio...you don't need to worry about year after 1939, just use your axles and bells. Stock original ratio (obviously possibly changed) will be stamped on bottom of banjo and marked on speedometer drive housing...tooth count is the certain way. Just divide ring count by pinion count...9-37 equals 4.11. If you get an original set in good condition, setup is normally very easy. Aftermarket gears can take more work. Try to find a center section with ratio you want.
Thanks Bruce. Check out this site re 'Banjo' and axle styles plus axle conversions... http://www.hotrodworks.com/project_vehicles_view.asp@carid=40.html Roger
Well I got the rear-end totally apart and to my dismay the whole center section is gone. Those were 3.54's too. See Pic. Fortunately a friend of mine heard about the bad news and called. I have not heard from the guy in years so it was a big surprise when he announced himself. Chit Chat & so on. Then he says he probably has all the parts I need to rebuild the Banjo and Spider gears laying about in his garage. Well he did, and now hopefully it will go together well and the 'OL' 46 will be rollin soon. Thanks for your help. Roger
Wow! That kind of damage to the support generally requires dropping the clutch at 9 zillion RPM or having the gears eat a chunk of debris! Impressive pile-o-shrapnel there!
So I haven't been inside any banjo's, 'splain me. Are we looking at 60 years of metal fatigue? Roger said "no hotrodding", was it just time for this rear end to die? Or was there something that Roger didn't know about maintenence on these old dogs that maybe we should all learn. Thanks, Mike
It takes a lot of impact, I would think, to split the rear support like that. Such violence would normally be from an extreme clutch drop with good traction or gears forced to climb one another by a loose chunk of metal getting into the mesh. This might well be from two incidents...a chunk of gear tooth breaks, later finds its way into the mesh area...? One vague su****ion: This was after a brake job. What was used to pull hubs? Could some sort of unwise hammering on a Bingo puller or such have created sufficient internal impact to start this?? Another POSSIBLE odd failure point is lock gadget on pinion nuts failing. If that goes, parts can start wandering, eventually creating enough play perhaps for gears to climb.
NO dropping of the clutch at a high RPM or low RPM. I backed out of the driveway and went about 100 ft stopped and talked to a guy for a minute and then slowly took off and Shifted at about 5 MPH and "BANG, POW,BOOM". R.E. the 'brake job' I used a drum puller, old school type, that only pulls the drums off the axle without any pressure placed on the internal parts. My friend, Dan, is an old Ford nut and a great old flatty mechanic from way back. He explained that what happens sometimes is over the years that the rear bearing starts moving around when the two lock nuts on the pinion start working loose or the set-up was poor from the last guy who worked on the car. I know someone did something in the not too distant past as there was Silicone sealer between the banjo and torque tube. Well Dan states the pinion starts rocking up and down and causes the rear bearing over time it wears out the rear 'keeper plate' as well as placing undo pressure on the bearing which it wasn't designed to support. When the whole thing gets to a certain point the bearing will self destruct, get caught in the gears and ruin the Banjo. Now I bought the car in November and havn't put 50 miles on the car since the brake job. I bought the car from a young guy in his 20's who might have tried to 'hot-rod' the heavy car around and got this whole situation started. Dan stated that the rear bearing might have been already busted and lying in the oil just waiting to get picked up when cold and get pulled into the ring & pinion. Who knows ? I drove these cars years back and never had anything like this happen even when 'hotrodding' it around. Spun a driveshaft off once. Hope this helps someone. Roger PS; You should have seen the spider gear housing. It looked like a three year old went crazy with a grinder and chewed up the entire outside. It looked like this was from an earlier incident or?????
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