New guy w/Travelwagon

The weekend wrapped up with the van’s new axle fitted and the spring pads & shock mounts welded on. I even got into the stinky oil and changed out the clutch packs in the LSD (wearing gloves!). Tomorrow I’ll pick up axle and pinion seals plus new brake shoes. Shouldn’t be long now for the final install.

The new axle is much larger than the original, but fits well within its space. It was fun to put this together and see how much OE stuff could be used: the brake hose on the Ranger axle reached the van’s brake line nicely with just relocating a bracket. The sway bar is the big story here with hardly any modifications needed to install. Got some ½” X 8” bolts for attaching the rear shocks and the sway bar end links through the frame rail. The brake lines to the wheel cylinders required some sharp bends after the spring pads were moved out where the van needed them- that was the hardest part of this whole thing.


The parking brake cables from the old axle fit nicely into the new axle’s backing plates so we’ll still have that same functionality,and the vent hose attaches in the exact same spot on both axles; that was nice.

Now off to the driveline shop, again.

The driveshaft is back again, this time with 1310 u joints in both ends, it keeps getting shorter. Now the weak link is likely the clutch.



This upgrade took a few turns from my initial plan, but worked out just fine. Like the song says: “you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need”, certainly applies here. I had focused on using an Explorer setup and instead, took a step back, reevaluated, and moved forward with the Ranger package. Glad I did, it seems now like the obvious choice.

Took the van for a road test the other day when we were experiencing a dry spell and there was a remarkable reduction in noise coming from the back of the van. While it was still on the jackstands, I ran the van up to 100 mph in high gear for a brief moment and it was much smoother than before- it’s probably the only time the needle ever has seen that half of the speedometer!

The Pos-e-traction works too, I’m hoping the grass grows back.

Your pinion angle looks off. Looks like it's pointing down. It should be pitched at the same angle up as the trans output is down. Generally around 3 degrees. The crankshaft line and the pinion angle line shoud be parallel.

Seth G wrote:Your pinion angle looks off. Looks like it's pointing down. It should be pitched at the same angle up as the trans output is down. Generally around 3 degrees.  The crankshaft line and the pinion angle line shoud be parallel.

Yup, you're right. It was off and I got the pleasure of doing that twice! I don't know how that happened, but it did. I may have read the angle finder on the wrong side of the zero. It's much better now with no vibration.