Removing the Gran Torino
rear was much the same as pulling the Lincoln rear,
only now we had the convenience of jacks and the
garage.
|
We wanted to use the 3.25:1 third member from the
Gran Torino so we pulled that before we ditched
the housing. Both cars used 28 spline axles. We
considered keeping the combination junction/flexible
brake hose, but it was brittle. We discarded hard
brake lines since we'd be making new ones. |
Side by side, we could see there was very little
difference between housings. However, the Lincoln
Housing (close) uses a larger axle flange with a
wider bolt pattern than the Gran Torino housing
(far). The bearing bores are also different. The
Lincoln housing also has a thru-hole for the parking
brake cable. |
The Lincoln rear-end was
now complete with our original third member and
reinstalled Lincoln axles. We slipped the unit under
the car with a floor jack and attached the upper
control arms. We were eager to test fit the springs
in order to confirm the perches were the same. As
we hoped, they were. |
Next, we were ready to attach the trailing arms.
They took a bit of coaxing with the new polyurethane
installed. If you look closely, you can see we boxed
the trailing arms with a 1-1/2" wide piece
of strip iron and two long welds. A simple upgrade.
See
photo. |
We installed the rear shocks. The mounting point
on the axle housing was almost identical to the
Gran Torino.
|
We installed new calipers and rotors. We picked
up these rotors from Napa for about $30 a piece.
After some shopping around we found these "unloaded"
A1 Cardone rebuilt calipers for $49 each and pads
for both left and right were $19. Don't be fooled,
the same caliper was being sold "loaded"
for $90 each at most automotive parts chain stores.
|
We installed the flexible brake hoses that we picked
up at the salvage yard.
|
The junction/flexible brake
hose we used here is not required for the Lincoln
since its' rear brake lines run along the frame
rail. However, the rear brake lines on the Torino
run from the hose to hard lines that run along the
axle. The hose was unusually expensive for what
we got. About $40. |
We installed the junction/flexible
hose to the top of the third-member. Yes, this meant
we were going to have three flexible lines for our
rear discs. The other option was to run custom hard
lines along the frame rail.
|
We attached the flexible brake hose to the hard
line mounted to the underside of the tub.
|
We now needed to estimate where on the axle housing
to mount the bracket which would fix the caliper-side
flexible brake hoses. |
