[Cautrell05]

So I had a couple free days and made some more progress. The pedals will wait until I have the front end off. and that's going to wait until things warm up and I can move the truck outside where I have more room. Figured it'd be a good weekend to change rear ends. The little 7 and 1/2 inch would probably get by with some wheel spacers. But I can't help but think the first time I get traction that 400 is going to make short work of it. I picked up a 77 Lincoln nine inch a while back for a hundred and fifty bucks. Complete rotor to rotor. rather than mess with it at home I loaded it up and took it into work. I was in a hurry that day and for some reason did not get a single picture while I was there but it's not a big deal. It was nice having all my tools there got it all tour down to a bare housing and all the leftover brackets cut off of it. The original Lincoln calipers have the parking brake built into them it looks like it would be easy enough to adapt. The rotors are I think 11 and 1/2 in. These are obviously toast but new ones are priced pretty reasonable. It's a lot easier to go with an existing system than trying to adapt something. As expected it had a 3.00 rear end gear. With short tires in a light vehicle that's probably not too bad. I have another third member sitting out in the shed that's got 350 years in it. The nice part with these is it does not take that long to change gears on a 9 inch if I want to try something later. Nice surprise was that it had a factory posi in it. Clutch kits for them I believe for under a hundred bucks. I can live with that.
With the rear end tore down inspected most of the way cleaned up and put back together The next step was pull the old one out of the truck. the leaf spring bolts all came out very nicely without any headache. I kind of wish the u-bolts would have twisted off. It would have made it a quicker process.