Rear Axle Mock Up July 08

We had gotten a Nissan R200 diff and I had cleaned it up and polished the rear mounting plate. I think it came out pretty cool, but now we had to fabricate some half shafts as the original u-jointed specimens simply would not do. We started with a pair of Good Parts CV conversion half-shafts. These were designed to fit the stock diff, which was the original plan, but things had obviously changed. The half-shafts we got were among the first batch made and had so some issues. But the new rear hubs were well done and a massive improvement over the stock hubs. It was decided to simply purchase a used set of Nissan half-shafts and use the inner CV joint and shaft cut down to the proper length and re-splined to fit the outer CV joint from the Good Part set.

Here you see the Nissan diff sitting in it's new home, doesn't it look pretty?

A tighter shot showing the cooling fins, I spent a long time polishing that thing!

In this shot you can see, on the upper left, the flange of the inner CV joint being installed.

Here's a better picture of the inner CV joint install.

This is a view from the top, you can clearly see the left inner CV joint housing. That little tube with the tape on it left of center is the diff vent.

This shot gives a better view of just how massively built the CV joint housing is, ours has a 6 bolt pattern, a 5 bolt pattern is also available.

In this shot you can see that both inner CV joints have been installed as well as the new hubs and outer CV joint assembly's. That light brown stuff in between the inner and outer CV joints is just what it looks like, wood!

A tighter shot of the left side. The wood, or dowels actually, were used to simulate the shafts in order to find the proper length. A lot of care was taken to get an accurate measurement, the dowels were turned on a lathe to fit precisely into the inner assembly's of the inner and outer CV joints.

You can see from this angle that the measurements were taken with the trailing arms set to a neutral or level position. We also made sure that there was no binding throughout the range of movement of the trailing arm.

I included this picture even though it is a little blurry, to show just how tight the fit is between the outer CV joint and the inside of the trailing arm tunnel. We had to do some grinding to clear powder coat and irregularities in the casting.

 After we were happy with the final measurements of the dowels the Nissan shafts were rough cut using a cut off wheel. The shafts were then turned in a lathe to clean up the cuts and set the outside diameter to match the inside diameter of the outer CV joint. This was no easy task as the shafts were well hardened!! The shafts were then sent to Moser Engineering to have new splines cut.