| How To: 8.8 Rear End Swap |
| Step 1: |
| First loosen the lug nuts on both rear wheels, but do not remove them yet. |
| Step 2: |
| Next jack up the rear of the car and support it with jack stands, do not support it by the rear end, put the supports on the frame rails, where the lower control attach to the floor of the car. |
| Step 3: |
| Remove the lug nuts and then take both wheels off the car and set them aside. |
| Step 4: |
| Remove the brake calipers, there are 2 pieces to each caliper, the main caliper and the bracket its attached to. The main caliper is what holds the brake pads, it is on top. Remove this first, this is done by removing the 2 bolts that hold it on, they are located behind the caliper, one at the top and one at the bottom. These 2 bolts are not very tight so they will be easy to loosen. This will alow you to remove the brake pads, pull them out and set them aside along with the cover piece. Before we can take the rotors off we have to remove the caliper bracket. This again is held on by 2 bolts behind the bracket, these bolts are a lot tighter and will take some stragth to get loose unless you have an impact wrench. A power bar/johnson bar will work better than a ratchet in this situation. Once these are removed, take the caliper and tie it up with some wire to the frame in order not to damage the brake lines. Now the rotors can be removed. Always try to reinstall the bolts after they have been removed back into the proper holes so you wont forget which bolts go where. |
| Step 5: |
| Next remove the dust shield from each side, these are held on by 3 little bolts, they may be rusted and will either strip the heads or break off when you try to remove them, this is OK since they are not really needed, I didn't put my dust shileds back on when I did the swap in my car. Try spraying them first with a special spray that loosens rusted bolts, this may help! |
| Step 6: |
| For 94-95 model years:If you follow the brake line from the calipers you will notice right behind where the caliper was mounted the brake line is attached to the rear end by a little clip with a bolt, remove this bolt and clip. A little farther down ther is what I call a junction box, a little rectangular box that the brake line runs through, it is press fitted to a larger bracket on the rear end, I could not get this bracket off, the bolts were too tight plus they had a torx screw holding the bracket on. Instead of removing this bracket I just popped the junction box off of the bracket, I had to kinda chisel it off and break it off the bracket, be careful when you do this! Once this is done it will not go back on this bracket, but don't worry the brake lines are secured enough elsewhere so its nothing to be worried about. On the passanger side about half way between the caliper and the pumpkin there is another junction box, this has to be unscrewed form the axle houseing, use a wrench to loosen this! For 96-98 model years: I believe that the brake line system on 96-98 model years is quite different than the 94-95. The brake lines run alng the top of the underside of the car instead of along the rear axle, in that case you probably won't have to worry about removing the brake lines from the rear axle in this step. Remove the connector attached to the ABS sensor, it sits on the plate that the caliper bracket it mounted to. Next remove the actual sensor. Remove the small bolt holding it on than GENTLY work the sensor out, its in there pretty snugly so be carefiul when doing this. |
| Step 7: |
| If your car is equipped with a rear sway bar now is the time to remove it. It is held on by four bolts, two on each side. They run through each lower control arm. You will also notice that the E-brake is bolted to the outside of the lower control arm on each side, once these four bolts are removed then the sway bar can be removed. If you do not have a sway bar you will only have one bolt on each lower control arm for the E-brake, remove this bolt to free the E-brake from the lower control arm. |
| Step 8: |
| Now would be a good time to disconnect the driveshaft from the rear end housing. You can remove the driveshaft one of two ways. Either at the universal joint (a "+" shaped joint that is inbetween the driveshaft and the driveshaft yoke) This is the hard way though. The easier way is to remove the driveshaft yoke from the rear end housing, It is held on by 4 bolts, these are 12 point bolts so you will need a 12 point socket instaed of the regular 6 point sockets I had to use a torch to heat up the yoke around the bolts inorder to get them loose, they are on there pretty tight. DO NOT heat up the bolt head, heat up AROUND the bolts, this will make the metal around the bolt EXPAND and thus make it easier to loosen. The reason why I preferred to remove the yoke instead of the universal joint, is 1. its easier, and 2. most of the rear ends I swapped into stangs did not come with the yoke on them so I had to use mine, so it had to be removed from my stock rear end anyways. |
| Step 9: |
| Now take another set of jack stands and place them under the rear end, this is to hold it up while we remove the control arms and shocks, wouldn't want it to fall! hehehe, Anyways place the jack stands as far as you can to each end. Best spot would be right up close to the shock brackets. |
| Step 10: |
| Now we can remove the rear shocks, the best way is to remove the top bolt where the shock is mounted in the truck, I did not do this though. This will relive the pressure in the shock and make it easier to remove the bottom bolt. If you do not remove the top bolt like I did not do then when you try to remove the bottom bolt the shock will want to compress and thus make the bottom bolt really tuff to slide out. I believe you have to remove the inner panelling of the trunk to get at the top bolt of the rear shocks. I really wish I had of done this. Once the top bolt is removed then you will need a wrench and a power bar/johnson bar to remove the lower bolt. Place the wrench on the nut and then use the power bar/johnson bar to remove the bolt, allow the wrench to turn with the nut until the wrench it up againt the rear axle housing, this is so you won't have to hold it while you remove the bolt, this gets tiring removing the bolts unless you have an impact wrench. Once again a ratchet will not be strong enough to loosen the bolt, loosen it with a power bar/johnson bar first and the use the ratchet to do the rest. |
| Step 11: |
| Now we can remove the lower control arms and rear springs. Once again a power bar/johnson bar and a wrench will be need. Place a floor jack under the lower control arm to prevent it from moving once the bolt is removed, the spring will try and force it down. Once the nut is remove then you can remove the bolt, this was probably the hardest part of the entire swap, this bolt did not want to come out. In the middle of the lower control arm bushing the bolt rusted and swelled and this made it very difficult to remove it, especially since the bushing is rubber. I ended up have to get another bolt and using a hammer bang the other bolt into the hole and thus forcing the rusted bolt out the other end. Since the bolt I banged into the hole was not rusted it came back out rather easilty. The weird thing was that the bolts on the 8.8 rear end did not rust adn swell as bad as they did on my rear end, weird since the 8.8 rear end was almost 10 years older. I think FORD used cheaper bolts on the newer cars. Anyways, once the bolt is out, lower the floor jack until the rear spring is expanded enough to remve it, then remove the spring and allow the lower control arm to lower the rest of the way |
| By: V6Sprout |