Okay, I’m finally done. Let me first say that lifting the rear diff (anybody know what a LSD diff weighs?) on my back and jackstands was NOT FUN!!!
After everything was put back together I went out for my first LONG drive yesterday. Car is phenomenal and very tight. I completely forgot to get before pictures but I tried to have the car aligned and the alignment shop told me nearly 2.8 deg neg on the passenger and 1.1 or so neg on the drivers. It was obvious and actually pretty silly looking from the rear when you looked at the car from the back end. After the work I’m dead nuts even on both sides.
Some interesting notes when doing this project. The only work I didn’t do was push out the axle carrier bushings and the diff bushing. The shop the did those three said it took them 2 hours of torch, hacksaw and press. They definitely earned the $100 to do this.
Make sure to clean out the receiving hole in the body where the axle carrier bushing goes into. I took my old bushing which still had a proper rod still attached (one broke) and cleaned it and used it as the template for how easily it went into the receiving hole. I used sandpaper to clean it.
Getting the diff up even 18" was a HUGE pain with its weight and odd size. I owe my wife big time for getting greasy with me helping.
Nearly all the bolts that go back have to be replaced as they are all lock nuts. To do a final torque of the control arm bushing bolts I put a jack under each control arm for the final torque and let the body rest to simulate ride height.
Have fun with the dumba$$ sway bar end links in the rear. They push in and are a major PITA to squeeze the sway bar through the small rubber opening (even when greased). Again with suspension loaded I tightened the lower nut for the end link.
… so here are the pix. (control arm bushings from AKGmotorsports and worked awesome)
