fbekholden.com

Welcome Harry

Starting to worry about you Sammy, which bit should we be interested in the most, the diff or Harry the face licking dog

i have no idea how to answer that Mal ... but if your more interested in Harry i have plenty more pics of him i can put up for you

anyways back on track with the diff

i've gotten a vn commodore diff and stripped all the internals, i've also cut all the mounts off it (although i left the panhard rod mount for the time being - you just never know) so i'm in the process of grinding all the mount bits flat then i will be ready to lop the ends off the tubes.



you can see on the left theres still the remnants of where i oxy cut the mounts off, and the right has been cleaned up with the grinder.

hey Mal, when i was grinding the mounts off Haz came in and was standing right near me watching the sparks ... i was suprised he didn't have a problem with the noise!

My old dog who was into car modification would spend all day in the shed watching me weld. She'd just stare at it. Never seemed to get any problems or discomfort.

Little greasy paw prints in the house are also amusing.

yeah i've wondered the same thing about my dogs watching the welder ... obviously welding flash doesn't effect K9's!

i have finally had a chance to do some more on this ... the past week has seen my brothers van do a timing belt and bend some valves ... i hate mitsubishis .... anyways onto a fun car to talk about

got the old diff in the jig and got all the mounts setup for it, also measured the current pinion angle.




once that was done it was time to do some measuring to work out how much i needed to lop off the ends of the new diff housing. What i did was measure from the insides of the housing on the old one out to the flanges and then worked out all the points to cut etc. the short side needed about 8mm removed (hardly worth cutting and shutting ) and the long side needed about 105mm removed.

it should be noted that the only reason i do it this way is so i can then use 2 short axles from the standard commodore (vn-vs live axle) which then means no need to get custom axles, it also means if you do ever snap one a spare is only a wrecker away!

so this is the end result of the new diff cut at the middle of where the spring mounting blocks will go ... i do it this way so the spring mount will give added support to the welded area - not that it will need it (the next pics will explain why).



once the ends were cut to the right lengths i then chamfer the ends to allow the weld to get a good full penetration.



so once they are all cut and chamfered at the right length for the new housing then it was time to make some sleeves to go inside them .... this is probably overkill, but it can't hurt to be too strong and it also allows me to make sure the housing is perfectly lined up when it welded (unlike the one it is replacing!!)



so what i do here is drill 2 holes 2.5cm from the end and 180 degrees from each other, then i rotate it 45 degrees and move to 7.5cm in fron the end, and do one there and then 180 degrees which gives 4 plug welds evenly distributed around the tube ....

but before the tubes can be plug welded in there was a little problem ... i could only find tube that was either slightly too small or too big so i got the too small stuff and cut it length ways then stuck it into the end tubes and bashed a cold chisel into the slot then welded it right up



so once that was all sorted i stuck the ends into the new diff housing and chucked it into the jig for welding up (also note it has the 4 plug weld holes in it aswell)



you will also note the jack under the joke ... this was used along with a protractor to set the pinion angle ... in a normal diff upgrade you would just set it back to the same as the original but in my case i have raised the yoke 1 degree because my v6 conversion looks like it will work better that way (search the net for "setting pinion angles" for more info on this!)

so once the diff housing was all welded up it was time to do the tedious task of removing the spring mounts without damaging them too much!! so after alot of hrs and about 4 cutting/grinding discs i got the mounts off the old housing and bolted them to the jig....



after these were secured i then put the housing back into the jig and thats pretty much all i had time to do today hopefully tomorrow i will get the mounts fully welded on and put the diff back into the car ... FINALLY!!

WOW Sammy your not scared to get in there and give it a shot ay !
Good stuff

too right harko ... i guess firstly i should say this is not my first one i have done various salidburys into EKs and stuff like that in the past but they were only mount cut type jobs but at the end of the day they are really no stronger than a bango .... they did have the added advantage of being easier to find centres for though (vb-vk commodore had small salisbury)

i have also done this same thing into my LH Torana which was alot harder as far as it had a 4 link swing arm setup, but also it needed a short vn axle and a short vl turbo axle which is about 1-1.5 inches shorter than the short vn axle but same stuff otherwise. its what i originally made the jig for, that and the bloke who originally did the one that is pictured above rusted did a shit house job so i thought screw this i can do better myself.

so yeah here it is .... mounts all on and shes now in the car and ready to go .... just need to get all the brakes sorted now!



i haven't welded the bump stops on yet as i wanted to wait till it was on the car to get the locations and angles spot on...

oh and just out of curiosity i decided to measure the new one once it was all said and done and its within .5mm of the originally intended lengths!

at some stage down the track i will be using this jig to make the same setup for Marie's EH then i will be narrowing it for making the diff for the gemini.

bump stop wo'nt line up properly with anything other than the chassis rail as originally bump stop was on body and diff had a tongue on it

yeah the chassis rail is where i planned to line it up with.

Nice work Sammy , what width do these diffs end up being when you use the stock axles ?

i have a feeling it was 1370 or 1470 or something around there thats axle flange to axle flange but i can't remember exactly... put it this way they are virtually the same width housing as a hr one is its only whatever difference the brakes would be ......

i originally ground a bit off the ends of the axles because they needed to loose like 5-10mm or something like that but theres enough spline on them to do it no problems ... even if you made the diff 10-20mm wider you could probably do it no problems ... but im pretty sure this is located as perfect as i could get to suit commodore offset 225's under the bum ... its very close on the rear of the guard as the ute guard curves in at the back (not sure if wagons or sedans are the same) ... i reckon a small guard pump would easily see a good fingers width clearance on both sides but i will probably go 7 inch rims and 215's before i pump the guards ... after all its not going to be a super high powered car so it doesn't need to get that much power to the ground.

and any narrower and you'd be looking at clearance issues with the commodore caliper on the inner chassis rail or springs/shock area.

it really is quite imazing that stock commodore bits all fit these things when you use the right combinations

well with all the rear brakes back in the car and all together etc i figured it was time to finish off the final piece in the brake puzzle which was the front brake lines .... or lack there of

so measured out a length of bundy tube for the drivers side, bend it all up to suit my requirements, flared the ends put it in no problems, had to cut about 8 inchs off the length as i had over estimated to be safe ....

onto the passenger side, plan was to bend up a pipe to go back from the master cylinder and under the brake booster and then follow the seam of the firewall behind the engine and down to the wheel from there ... all good, did an unreal job of bending it to suit the engine bay and of course the bloody thing has come up about 6-8 inchs too short

turned the lights off and went inside!!!!

needless today the one i make this arvo is not going to be 6-8 inchs too short its going to be 6-8 inches too long

and atleast i have a template to work off now

i'll be sure to get some photos up here shortly for yas! and hopefully i'll have fully working brakes in the next day or so.

Nice work on the diff Sammy. I did mine the same way but used the short axle as the long one and had a billet one made for the short side. From memory it took 190mm off the total width. I would have had the same caliper clearance issue so i fitted HQ drums on the rear and got nice dished wheels on it. These diffs are plenty strong and i havent broken anything yet once i put the billet axle in, but broke 2 resplined ones prior to that. And i dont take it easy on it either. Only thing that i was worried about was the oil flow back over the sleeve and the wheel bearing getting flogged out by worn bearing material. i was thinking it would not be able to return to the bottom of the centre of th diffbut its been ok after 3 years and plenty of ks on it now.

Troy