C clip elims for 8.8. Advice.

So my Celica is getting the ford 8.8 Explorer axle soon. This car is 90% fun weekend car. Occasionally driven super hard on twisty mountain roads. And 10% autox. Do I need elims or not? The rustang guys say you need them with built motors and dragging. The off-road crowd says you need them for crawling. Neither of which my Celica will be doing. At most (in the future) this car will have 260tq.

don't bother.

Disk brakes or drums?

You planning on twisting an axle off? Go eliminator. Never twisted an axle, and have no intention of launching on a well prepped dragstrip with slicks? Don't bother.

Nice. I have drums. And my only concern was side load pressure put on by hard cornering. I'm on kyb and cool overs. No slicks. Car rails hard. But it seems like the clip elims are for straight line hi jinks.

I wouldn't bother. I didn't do that mod in my old mustang till I was into the 11's. I beat the heck out of that car and it just kept coming back for more.

I road raced a Mustang for 11 years and never had an issue with the shafts. I did rebuild the limited slip and re-did it on a regular basis to keep it tight. This was for traction coming out of turns. You can check the wear on a limited slip on the 8.8 by just seeing how much movement there is on the shafts when you push and pull on them. You want as little as possible but I have seen .050-.060" movement as the clutches wear.

C clip eliminators are a band aid approach to keeping wheels on a car if the axle shaft breaks. A serious drag racer should instead install (By welding) 9 inch axle ends.

You guys are awesome. Nowhere else can you get help from a group of like minded nuts (and so quickly!)

The high side loading you're concerned about might put extra wear on the side gear thrust washers, but certainly won't pull the axles out.

Then again they put this axle under ~4000lb SUVs that could probably corner at least half as good as your car that probably weighs around half that, so you're likely still within design specifications of the axle.

Isn't an 8.8 a tad .... heavy for a Celica? I can feel the weight of the Explorer rear behind my falcon like an anchor.

Are you using the lighter car based housing?

Nope. It doesn't weigh that much more either. I don't know how much more, but it's not a real concern. The flip side was using the toothpick Toyota 6.7 axle and buying a stupid expensive LSD (1200$+ the cost for someone to set it up) total cost of my 8.8 swap will be 650$ and that's with all new brake parts. Pros- better gearing for acceleration, cheap LSD, cheap rebuild parts for everything, stout axle that will take abuse all day, and also no rare drift taxed parts to source. Cons- weighs more. Hmm......

The Explorer 8.8 has bigger axle bearings (larger axle dia at brg), larger 7/8" cross shaft in the TracLoc, and thicker "C" clip buttons. Never seen even a pic of an Explorer 8.8 that actually broke a c-clip. If you think you have enough power to break a 31spl axle, add 9" ends or disc brakes.

Trackmouse wrote: Nope. It doesn't weigh that much more either. I don't know how much more, but it's not a real concern. The flip side was using the toothpick Toyota 6.7 axle and buying a stupid expensive LSD (1200$+ the cost for someone to set it up) total cost of my 8.8 swap will be 650$ and that's with all new brake parts. Pros- better gearing for acceleration, cheap LSD, cheap rebuild parts for everything, stout axle that will take abuse all day, and also no rare drift taxed parts to source. Cons- weighs more. Hmm......

I went with an 8.8 for a similar project for the same reasons. FYI, the old RWD celica/corolla axles weigh 120 lbs without brakes. Explorer 8.8 is 200 lbs without brakes. 80 lbs isn't insignificant, but I thought it was worth it too.

If you are narrowing the Explorer housing to use 2 short side axles, that will get you 56-1/2" axle flange to axle flange.

There's also the V6 Ranger 8.8 housing to consider, which also uses a short and long axle. Narrow it to use 2 short side Ranger axles, AF/AF will be 53-1/4". Also lighter than the Explorer 8.8.

In reply to JohnyHachi6:

I wonder how much weight the Toyota axle gains when you get done beefing it up to take some abuse. Probably not 80lbs, but a decent percentage of that I'm sure.

In reply to weedburner:

Yeah, I think I might have used the Ranger axle in retrospect. Mostly to get a narrower setup, but I wanted the 31 spline axles at the time.