son decided he wanted to lower his car,decided static drop is the way he wanted to go, collected all the parts, dropped uprights and arms,aerostar coils shocks, new front tie rods,while we were at it why not change out the axle, located explorer axle drum style, now the hints that seem to be missing,make sure on the explorer axle that you get the one with the smaller drive shaft,being there is an oddball 8.8 that has no posi and larger u joints that a combo joint cant be matched to,this is from finding out the hard way, son dissasembled the axle not thinking about the posi unit proceded to shorten long tube which at that point the salvage isnt taing it back, the good point i that the pinion flange on the 8.8 is the same for the smaller driveshaft flange and the larger flange so that does not have to be changed, the lower plates for the ubolts where the shocks bolt will not work shocks on the explorer face the rear of the truck what we did was weld in 3.8 flat bar stock to the inside of the plates,explorer shock mounts face backwards use the shock bolt off the original plates and shocks bolt right back in place,another item the spring center pin is not centered,in the 30 plus years of working on cars this is the first time i ran into this maybe all the other times replacing springs or building stuff i got lucky, i dont know but found out on this build,just measure it to make sure you put them back in correctly,also the center hubs on the explorer are larger your wheels will not fit the hub we decided to cheat for the time being and i plasma cut the center lip out of the wheel ran it on a balancer and was fine,if i remember any of the other bitches while i was under there,on good not front drop went right in not happy with the shock setup that was suggested in the build threads going to research some more to find a better shock, other than some hammer work on the trunk pan to stop axle from hitting drives and does great burnouts now
Yeah...Live and learn on those 'off-center-center bolts'...Ran into that in the '70s, (but I had my shop and was doing beaucoup rear end changes!) Nice work on that little shoebox, looks great with the new stance. Nice height, looks 'healthy'. On the rear narrowing: Was the axle shaft diameter 'constant', and were you able to chop and re-spline? (haven't been inside an 8.8 yet...)
On an explorer rear the axles are different lengths. What most people do is swap the long tube for another short tube and use the short stock axle on both left and right side.
just as ffr said ,cut the tube in the straight section take out 3 inches, another thing we got the odd gear ratio 3.27,go figure we should have took it back and got a diff axle but it drives nice down the road and maybe the mileage will come up
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