Technical '40 Mercury Rearend

I found a '40 Mercury rearend and am interested in it for my Model A Tudor. I have read that they use a pinion that is different from a Ford in that the driveshaft is solid or pressed onto the pinion gear, unlike a Ford that uses a splined coupler. If I bought it I would intend to convert it to open driveline and wonder if the regular kit to do that to a Ford banjo rearend would work in the Mercury rearend. I guess I'd need to buy a ring and pinion to get the Ford splined pinion though.

Also, from what I've found about them is that the width of the '40 Mercury rearend and the '40 Ford rearend is the same at 59 1/2" Is that correct?

The rearend looks good in the photos in the ad. It's about 4 Hours away but is complete as rolled out from under the car and the price seems reasonable since it's complete with the brakes. I would need to cut the spring hangers off the housing ends though to convert it to the Model A style "spring over" configuration.

Advice and input is appreciated.

Lynn

 

For what you want it's probably easier to hold out for a Ford rear.

 

I put one in my 34 it will work with the new R/P the only difference I found was the spider gears had more teeth so that means more teeth on the axels.
Still not a problem, unless you twist an axel and then you will be looking for a Mercury axel much harder to find!!!

 

The Merc has one piece pinion/driveshaft that can be cut & re-splined for the open drive kit. Hot Rod Works can do this.
The ratio is most likely 3:54 to 1.

 

Do I read that correctly that HRW can cut splines on the existing Mercury pinion so it will work with their open driveline kit? That's bound to save some $$ vs buying a new ring and pinion. All '40 Mercury rearends had a 3.54 ratio rather than what I understand to be Ford's "normal" 3.78?

Lynn