1969 Dart Street/Strip (Re)Build
Over friday evening, a friend and I swapped over the 489 into the new housing. The old U bolts and nuts were giving us fits to remove so I just cut them off. We removed all the axles and swapped over the lug studs. It looked like rear end carnage in the garage.
You can see the difference in the stock A body axle lengths on the Yukons versus the shortened B body axles. There's about a 2 1/2" difference.
I was told that the rear gear in this car was a 3.70 ratio. I looked for that to verify but I didn't find anything that said 370. I only found this. It looked like a hand engraved "388" with some mfg part numbers across the teeth. Does 3.88 sound right to anyone? I can't say I've ever heard of that ratio before.
After getting the 489 in.
Test fitting a wheel, I ran into a problem. The studs I swapped into these axles did not fit so well. One stud spun on me! It did that with only a speed wrench. I really freaked out about it and had a sickening feeling for about an hour. What happened was the lug nut bottomed out on the stud JUST before it snugged the wheel against the drum. So I took it in to the shop and we LUCKILY got it off with an impact and applying pressure to the wheel against the lug nut. After comparing to two sets of studs, the shorter ones I had installed had a really long tall blunt shoulder which stuck past the hub further than what I thought it would have. The other longer studs had a shorter tapered off shoulder and did not stick out so far which is all I needed to not bottom out. So what I'm doing now is taking the advice from the shop and getting the heads of the studs tack welded into place (TIG welded by them). I cut down the longer studs so that they will be long enough to pass tech at the track. I will put those back in and take them in for tacking into place tomorrow so I won't have to worry about it in the future. Again, this is my first time doing any of this stuff so I'm learning as I go. Sometimes the hard way. :violent1:
I think that I am really going to like the look of these Billet Specialties Performer wheels though. I like the look of them better than the weld wheels that were on it. They just seem to have a cleaner look to them.
Here's the difference in the two studs. You can see how much shorter the shoulder is on the stud on the right. I had never noticed it before. I guess I assumed they would all be the same. WRONG! The stud on the right is actually about 1/4" longer than the one on the left too so it actually goes almost all the way to the end of the lug nut.
Over friday evening, a friend and I swapped over the 489 into the new housing. The old U bolts and nuts were giving us fits to remove so I just cut them off. We removed all the axles and swapped over the lug studs. It looked like rear end carnage in the garage.
You can see the difference in the stock A body axle lengths on the Yukons versus the shortened B body axles. There's about a 2 1/2" difference.
I was told that the rear gear in this car was a 3.70 ratio. I looked for that to verify but I didn't find anything that said 370. I only found this. It looked like a hand engraved "388" with some mfg part numbers across the teeth. Does 3.88 sound right to anyone? I can't say I've ever heard of that ratio before.
After getting the 489 in.
Test fitting a wheel, I ran into a problem. The studs I swapped into these axles did not fit so well. One stud spun on me! It did that with only a speed wrench. I really freaked out about it and had a sickening feeling for about an hour. What happened was the lug nut bottomed out on the stud JUST before it snugged the wheel against the drum. So I took it in to the shop and we LUCKILY got it off with an impact and applying pressure to the wheel against the lug nut. After comparing to two sets of studs, the shorter ones I had installed had a really long tall blunt shoulder which stuck past the hub further than what I thought it would have. The other longer studs had a shorter tapered off shoulder and did not stick out so far which is all I needed to not bottom out. So what I'm doing now is taking the advice from the shop and getting the heads of the studs tack welded into place (TIG welded by them). I cut down the longer studs so that they will be long enough to pass tech at the track. I will put those back in and take them in for tacking into place tomorrow so I won't have to worry about it in the future. Again, this is my first time doing any of this stuff so I'm learning as I go. Sometimes the hard way. :violent1:
I think that I am really going to like the look of these Billet Specialties Performer wheels though. I like the look of them better than the weld wheels that were on it. They just seem to have a cleaner look to them.
Here's the difference in the two studs. You can see how much shorter the shoulder is on the stud on the right. I had never noticed it before. I guess I assumed they would all be the same. WRONG! The stud on the right is actually about 1/4" longer than the one on the left too so it actually goes almost all the way to the end of the lug nut.
