9" Case Fitment

[GrnDragon]

I have had fitment issues with 2 different fabricated 9" housings and my aluminum strange case. Has anyone else had this problem before, or does anyone know how much elongation of the case holes would be acceptable before it would cause axle alignment issues?

[Blake Foster]

I normally use a LARGE soft Face hammer!!!

[GrnDragon]

Originally Posted by killer69

I normally use a LARGE soft Face hammer!!!

That will do the job, but I hate forcing stuff together. I am a Mechanical Engineer for the Navy and one of my areas of expertise is design/drawings and GD&T (geometric design and tolerancing) which basically controls fitment of parts and allowable tolerances between the parts. I have been searching for the bolt circle of a 9" everywhere to figure out which of the parts is off and by how much, but for some reason that information is Top Secret. Strange and Currie would not give me the numbers. This stuff should fit together MUCH better than it does, all of these parts "should" be CNC machined so hitting allowable tolerances should be done 100percent of the time.

But I do feel a little comfort knowing someone with your experience has to use the ol rubber hammer!

[Blake Foster]

I agree 100% they should fit better. but they don't theats why the big hammer lol

[Bryce]

I have not had that issue, as a fellow engineer I hate forcing things that should not be forced.

Are all the studs on the housing straight?

[GregWeld]

They all need to be tapped home with a little use of force.... Use a dead blow hammer it will go right home...

[GrnDragon]

So I have done a little more investigating, since the manufacturer of my newest housing actually sent me a video showing his face plates EASILY going together with two different cases (the face plate he used is from the same lot/machinist as my face plate). I know that doesn't 100% confirm the issue to be the case, but I tried something else that just may confirm the case as the culprit.

I took the studs out of both of my housings and lined up the top holes between the case and face plate and as many holes counter-clockwise as possible(which ended up being 4 total in each housing). Then marking which side of the hole was off and taking a "Fully Calibrated" mental picture of how far off the holes were, and the were suspiciously almost EXACTLY the same on both housings. So either the housings are off on the exact same holes a similar amount or my Strange case is off.

Now I need to figure out how to convince Strange that their case is off, because when I called them they were EXTREMELY cocky in telling me that the problem was with the housings and that they have only had 1 case ever returned because it was machined incorrectly. They did admit to me that they only check every 5th case for quality control. Which is pretty good quality control and would provide very high quality parts. I ONLY trust 100% inspection since statistics are all theoretical and basically "**** happens" in the real world...

Man building cars as a hobby is VERY stressful, and NEVER seems to go smoothly! I cannot count the number of times I have been so pissed I have said I was going to sell everything and start woodworking more.

[intocarss]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

They all need to be tapped home with a little use of force.... Use a dead blow hammer it will go right home...

What he said!! I have always had to tap them in

[GregWeld]

I own TWO Strange cases -- one aluminum and one nodular iron.... they both fit the exact same way -- they needed to be convinced...

But who knows what you've got going on...

[Bryce]

I have never had to tap one in. Moser aluminum case with two different housings and a stock ford 9" with two different housing that the aluminum case.