Converting a 49 chevy rearend to open driveline

In the Jan '04 Rod & Custom there is an article on converting an early Ford rearend to an open driveline.Is there a way to do this with an org. chevy rearend(49)? Secondly I have a dana 60 rearend, should this have a Chevy bolt pattern?

 

Last question first:
The only dana 60 rear axles in a 5 lug bolt pattern I'm aware of are for Hemi mopars and have the mopar/ford p***enger car pattern.....5 on 4.75"...
Then, ford sold the dana 60 under their 1/2 tons as a special order option from about '66 to '69 but that bolt pattern was 5 on 5.5" I had one under my 32 ford 5 window. What a beast! Musta weighed 300 lbs.
I think Fatman sells a kit to mount an open driveline rear axle under you chevy but when I built mine [1950] I damn sure couldn't afford a kit. I have a welder and a few grinders...made my own "kit"... I used a GM, G-body axle [78-87 malibu, cutl***, regal etc etc] and welded 4" lowering blocks, with a c-section, to the axle housing. I kept the original lower shock plates and bought looong u-bolts to bolt it all together. The spring center bolts locate the rear axle on the springs but they're drilled about an inch and a half forward of center, so ya gotta drill the receiving hole in the lowering block about an inch and a half forward of center to compensate. This puts your wheel right in the center of the wheelwell opening. While you're at it, whip up a dandy upper shock mount to get rid of the original trunk floor mounts. They'll eventually break out so now is a great time to make a square tube crossmember to weld across the upper framerails with shock mount tabs welded on it. It's a lot easier to do this with the rear axle out. I know, I did mine with the axle in place...
BTW, a camaro/nova axle is a better choice for tire clearance reasons. The G-body axle is about 1.5" too narrow for the old chevys but I had some americans I wanted to use on mine.......they had a 1.5" positive offset so I went with the narrow rear axle to compensate for the offset wheels. Worked ok.

 

"mopar/ford p***enger car pattern.....5 on 4.75"..."

you really meant 5 on 4.50", didn't you????

Brian

 

Yeah, I did.......thanks, Brian.

 

Antichrysler finished one up a few years ago. Think he used a Saginaw ****** and a camaro rearend. You should PM him and get the details.

 

Rocky, When you say Kit, you did not keep the factory tube and modify it to work the rearend .. you did the complete conversion didn't you or was that later.....

 

I changed everything at once. Went from siezed 216, 3 speed and torque tube to a 406 sbc, 4 speed and '83 cutl*** rear axle. Once again, the G-body rear axle isn't recommended unless you want to use offset wheels. They're a little narrow for the old chevys.

 

The G-body is also a coil-sprung rear. Making the job a little more difficult.

From what I've been told, Nova rear axles are nearly a bolt in, but the spring is narrower on the old Chevys than on the Novas.

Since I live close to Eaton Detroit Spring, and my Dad knows them guys, I was going to have a set of new leafs made up for my 49 Chevy to mount a Nova axle onto.

Rocky is right about the rear shock mounts, too. Back in high school, my shop teacher had a 51 Chevy that we put air shocks on to level it out. We made a simple upper shock mount stiffener out of some stock from the welding shop next door. Worked great! (The metal on the stock mounting area is pretty thin...even more so on mine!!!)

One question, though...WHICH Nova axle works best?

The cheapest Novas by far are the 1975-79 models, and that's the style I'm looking for to use as a donor vehicle. The rear spring/shock mounts on these Nova axles is a bit bulky and clumsy looking, but it'll be pretty much hidden under the car anyway, so that doesn't concern me. Just wondering if the width will be right???

(I also want a 75-79 Nova because the 250 engines in those have the integral head (that nobody likes but me!), HEI distributors, and they used TH-350 or TH-200 ******s instead of 'glides.)

Low buck cruiser project here!

 

I think the preferred rear is the more-desired '68-'74 Nova. The early rears are too narrow and the later rears are considered too weak for V8s. Also, it manages to screw over anyone looking for a 10-bolt posi for their '68 Camaro!

 

Too weak for a V8??? Nahh...they're still a 10-bolt!

(Besides...I'm just runnin' a wimpy six!!)

 

I think you boys missed the point of the question.

He is wanting to keep the stock rear end and just do away with the torque tubes right? Maybe I didn't understand the question.....

 

The cutl*** rear axle I used had already been under a 47 ford coupe, so all the coil spring bracketry had already been cut off. I cut off all the homemade mount junk and fab'd up the 4" blocks/spring pads from 3/16ths plate. Cut a c-notch in the tops of 'em to conform to the axle and set everything up with loose mounted U-bolts to set my pinion angle...spot welded the blocks to the axle tubes and rolled the axle back out to finish weld...EZ operation. I used the stock sedan delivery springs...same as sedan springs with an extra leaf. I reused the stock 50 chevy lower shock mounts too, after oblonging the u-bolt holes to accomodate the wider U-bolts needed to go around the bigger-tube cutl*** axle..I used my car to actually haul more than ***. I took it to swapmeets and used it to haul all the wedding gifts home from my son's wedding reception...brought home my new 60 gallon air compressor in the back of it once...drove it to the west coast twice and once to Wisconsin on Americruise....the car worked great.

 

I understood, just commenting on options I'm considering and swaps mentioned in the post already.

Actually, if there were a simple way to convert the stock 49 Chevy rear to open drive, I'd probably do it to mine to save the h***le of a rearend swap...since power won't be a factor!

Anyone????

 

Oh ****! You're right.......DUH! Er, nobody I know makes a conversion kit to convert the old axle over to an open driveline because it's pretty simple to stick a late model rear in the car...and the early axles are pretty spindly. sorry for the rambling explanation of something you didn't even ask about. I'm goin back to bed.

 

Really, though...how hard would it BE????

(I guess I'll see what's what when I get the old torque tube off of mine!)

Would it be as "simple" as making up some sort of yoke??

What is inside of that mysterious tube, and can it be modified to accept an open drive?

 

Hack, my guess would be yes. There's some sort of PTO bearing that works in the Ford torque tube that seals it and supports the pinion for use with a regular drive-shaft. The trick is to find the right one at Tractor Supply. No one seems to know which one works with the Ford tubes and I'm guessing the Chevy one would be different anyway.

 

Funny, too. Everybody wants to run a vintage rear for the look now but all of the late-fifties rod magazines I have talk about the cars running early Ford transmissions (1939, usually) with '49 Ford tailshafts and early-fifties Ford rears. We are retro rodders indeed!

 

Rocky, That is why I asked about whether you did the full swap or not as I thought this guy wanted to keep his stock stuff and only swap the rearend... but it looks like that has now been figured out...

 

No, Hack, you DON'T want the stock rear... you wanna "donate" it to my modified... gotta keep it "all Chevy" ya know? Real Fords have Stovebolt power!

Jay

 

Oh yeah...I forgot!!!

But what about that Olds rear of yours???

 

G***er... g***er... g***er...henry j...



Jay

 

I have a 48 Chevy rear that is Free to a good home here in Toledo

 

when I had my 49, I just changed the oil and it held up great. Just cut the front springs to compisate for the rear sag, looked good.

 

Thanks for the info, so now I have a useless dana 60,right?Just to simplify things what is the easiest,cheapest rearend to use then,with little or no welding & modification.

 

The popular opinion is that 68-78 Nova/Camaro rear axles fit pretty well. Rocky got a modified G-body axle to work in his. Novas are still fairly easy to find...I intend to buy a whole donor car to do up my 49!

 

Hey Kev...give AntiChrysler (Pat) a shout (p.m. or email him for his info...he's in the user list). He did Laura's car with a camaro rear and the sagoinaw (like Crease said ) and it went pretty smoothly and ran like a champ. Ran so good, in fact, that I'm using the Str8Six and saginaw from that car...Laura wanted a BIG motor so she's having a nailhead put in.

Dan

 

Camaro/Nove is what most of the big boys use. I'd be more prone to use a ford rear after using a puny G-body 10 bolt with the 7.%" ring gear. I never broke it but I have broken the 8.2" earlier 10 bolt GM unit. If I do another one, I'll prolly use a Mustang 9" if the width is close and I think it is...
No matter which one you use, you'll no doubt hafta cut off old spring mounting hardware and weld on new hardware to fit your car. Be careful on width..there's not much room for mistakes in a 49 chevy wheelwell. I ran 8.5" wheels on mine with 275-R70-15's and there was about 1/4" clearance on both sides after removing most of the wheelwell lip and "m***aging" the inner wheelwells with a 4# persuader.

 

As mentioned, I've done this conversion. I think the year camaro I used was a 1980 or 1979. Anyways, It's was one of the last years that camaro used leafs.

The width of rear-end and the spring perches are spot on. However, you do have to make some sort of mount to move the rearend back about 2 inches. I just bought a cheap set of lowering blocks from the pep boys and welded a tab with hole drilled in it in front of the original mounting hole. Don't forget to take all the mounting hardware from the camaro. This includes the rubber bushing and the like.

You'll need to weld the shock mount from you're '49 to the camaro's mounting plates. This makes more sense when all the parts are in front of you. The camaro's shocks don't mount the same.

All in all this swap is easy and you don't have to over think it. The hardest part is drilling holes through the old shock mounts that you welded to the camaro's mounting plate.

I hope this helps.


As for the saginaw swap. It's pretty straight forward. However, I had the hardest time finding a bellhousing that would work. As I understand it there are only about 6 years that you can find a 235 that used the spread bore ****** mount. I think it's 57-63. I spent several days of junkyard hunting with no luck. Then I practically stumbled over the bellhousing I needed at the Reirsons garage.

I will tell you this. Some will try to convince you that you need to remove the old ****** cross member and fab a new one. This is not the case at all. The ****** will drop right in from inside the car. All you have to do is drill a 1 1/2 in hole in the bottom of ****** cross member and then drill a 1/4 inch hole in the middle of the cross member. Oh, You'll have to put the ****** in upside down and twist it into place.

Okay, I hope this seems easy enough.

 

Here's a site that I found that gives lots of info on swaps of all kinds. http://www.stovebolt.com/helpme.htm

Here's another that has charts showing suspension and axle widths for donors and receivers. http://50chevy.freeservers.com/Suspension_Widths.html#Suspension It really helps to narrow down what you're looking for at the salvage yard.

Swapping the rear in my son's '52 was really easy with minimal welding and it was my first time. We used a rear from a '76 - '80 camaro.

 

What about pinion angle? Did you guys cut the rear end loose from the pads?