will mounting a rear end this way work??

IRS T-bird rears are plentiful and cheap. Lots of gear ratios available for the 8.8 too.

 

The crazy Mercedes ..... called a low pivot swing axle. Used on all Mercedes cars from about 1951 to 1967. A very effective, low cost way to get IRS but not quite as good as a real IRS.

Would work great for what you want if you could figure a way to connect to the rubber universal joint.

 

Barf. I had to work on those once. Never again!

 

NO - it will not work!!! and I can go on and on WHY ?

 

From your drawing, it looks like you'd have room for trailing links and a DeDion beam. That would be pretty cool.

 

Just keep in mind, the shorter the driveshaft, the steeper the angle at any given vertical displacement. A really short driveshaft can put you beyond the capabilities of the u-joints very quickly.

Some more weirdness:

How about mounting the engine, gearbox, and rearend to a subframe that is pivoted about the centre of gravity of the subframe/engine/gearbox/rearend ***embly, a la Vespa? It pivots only about a lateral axis; you'd pivot the rearend as in your drawing to allow for roll. It'd be a very minimal bit of structure that ties the engine block, lateral pivots, and rearend pivots together. That is another way to get two different geometries in two different planes, and to have different spring rates for bump/pitch and roll.

Another way is to start thinking along the lines of boat V-drives, either by mounting the engine and gearbox backwards and running a driveshaft back along one side of it, or by running one driveshaft back past the rearend and another forward from there to the rearend. Both of these can be cobbled out of 4x4 parts. In fact the former is basically a conventional live-axle 4x4 set-up less the rear driveshaft and axle, turned back to front.