Well, today's project when to E36 M3 in a hurry. What I was supposed to do, was clean up the rear 3rd member, find out what kind of locker it has, and install it. Yeah, that didn't work
The problems started with the differential. I thought it might have a locker in it. Wrong. It's got one of these:
That, for those that have never seen one, is a mini spool. Not what I wanted to see. Good, bad or ugly, it's going in. I'll see if I like it. From what I've read, they aren't too bad unless you drive on ice a lot. If I hate it, I'll pull the open carrier out of my stock 3rd and install it with the 5.38 gears.
That simple 3rd swap failed to happen. What actually happened was, attempting to install the 3rd member. After installing the heavy bastard the 4th time and not finding what was hitting the ring gear, I pulled the entire rear end so I could see what I was doing.
The 5.38 gears were hitting the rear of the housing. Once I could see what was hitting where, it was nothing a brass punch and a 4 pound hammer couldn't fix. 3rd member promptly fell back in. The axle is now back together and ready to go back in.
It then became a while it's apart project. The YJ Jeep spring conversion for the rear axle has begun. That means new front spring mounts, new lower shock mounts, new spring shackles. The process has begun.
This is the old spring and mount. They are 6" shorter than the YJ spring and stiff.
This is the new front spring mount. It could be bolted or welded, I opted to weld it.
This is sitting on the new springs. I temporarily used the missing link shackles I have for the front springs. That let me load the spring so I can figure out the mount position and shackle length.
That's as far as I made it today other than welding the lower shock mounts onto the axle housing.
More to come.