Convert to floater or replace my axle housing?

[SSLance]

As I'm currently replacing my 4th axle bearing so far this season so I'm now starting to look for options to upgrade from my Big Bearing Ford axle ends to something with a tapered bearing or full floater design.

I'm currently running a 9" housing with 31 spline axles, the Torino style big bearings and a Ford Explorer rear disc brake setup and I like everything about it except the bearings just can't seem to handle the side loads I'm putting on them now.

I've searched around and found a few threads on full floaters but most refer to buying complete custom ordered housings. I guess that is an option but I'd like to see if there is a way to fab floater ends onto my existing housing as another option.

My main concerns are packaging and brakes. I don't have a frame notch and I don't want to buy new rear rims with a different offset unless it's absolutely necessary. It really doesn't cost that much to keep replacing my existing bearings so spending $5,000 or so for a complete package wheels to pinion doesn't make sense. But if there were ends available that I could graft onto my housing and make a sensible brake package work with them...I'd like to explore the idea.

Am I completely off base here or is this something that has been accomplished before?

[SSLance]

So apparently an A20 style tapered bearing and seal will fit right into the big bearing housing ends I already have. All I have to do is order them with new larger diameter axles at the bearing because the A20 style bearing ID is 1.562" and my current bearing ID is 1.531".

The A20 Tapered bearings come with an integrated seal...still trying to figure out exactly how that works...



Has anyone ever ran these bearings with a 9" on a car that sees lots of heavy side loads? If so, how did they hold up?

[SSLance]

Looks like it works like this.



More the typical setup where the bearing gets it's lube from the rear end gear oil and the seal is on the outside of the bearing held in by the retaining plate.

[dontlifttoshift]

Your existing housing can be used, no problem there.

Axles can be cut for 35 spline exterior and 31 spline interior if you were looking at a GMR setup.

Does your SVO brake setup have the internal expanding shoe or is the e brake on the caliper? The explorer caliper takes up a lot of space and isn't really necessary, you don't need the floating caliper.

What is the distance from the wheel mount surface to the framerail / inner wheel house, whichever comes first.

How far from WMS to control arms and or your coilovers?

How important is a parking brake?

Didn't realize you were still running ball bearings, the A20 is a better choice but not the end all. With floating calipers already in place I would be willing to try the A20 bearings, it would be a much easier choice if you didn't need axles. I went through several sets of A20 bearings on my roadster, but the loads it was seeing verge on ridiculous. 31" tall tire on a 20x10 with 3 1/2" backspace.

When the bearing retainer is tightened on the A20 bearing the rubber seal between the two halves expands to seal on the ID of the housing end and is then fixed in place due to the clamp load of the bearing retainer. The axle spins inside the seal. The seal works well as long as there is no end play in the bearing I never actually hurt the bearings, but the retainer would bend, then we had endplay and the seals would leak.

[SSLance]

The Explorer brake package does have the e-brake expanding shoe inside the brake rotor and I'd like to retain some sort of e-brake.

I'll measure the WMS to frame, inner fender, control arm and coilover mounts tonight when I'm putting it back together.

I haven't bent a retainer yet, but probably only because the bearing is the weaker link and fails first. I think I'll try a set of the A20 bearings and see how they do. It appears that I can get axles and bearings for $300 and they'll fit right into my existing setup.

I'm not sure why I'm just now finding out about this type of bearing setup.

[Ron Sutton]

Hey Lance,

You are correct in that the cause of your bearing failures is because you now have more grip ... which loads everything more. You have a common goal (floaters) & challenge (already have a housing in the car). I do this often utilizing Speedway Engineering. We take a guy's existing housing with all of their suspension brackets already welded in the correct place ... ship it to Speedway ... and weld on Mod-Lite floater ends.

When I am involved, I almost always move the face of the hubs 1/2" inward on both sides ... so we can utilize wheel spacers as a tuning tool. So ... hypothetically, if your current 9" Ford rear end is 60" WMS-to-WMS ... we make it 59" ... and use spacers to fine tune placement of the rear track width for handling purposes. This is not mandatory ... just an option that only adds what the spacers cost.

On the packages I do for Pro Touring, Autocross & Track Cars ... like Greg Weld's Mustang ... we typically use Mod-Lite aluminum floater hubs in any common pattern 5x5.0", 5x4.75" or 5x4.50". The studs can be 1/2" or 5/8". You can't use the NASCAR style 5/8" lug nuts easily. They all have a 45° conical seat & the outer hex is huge at 1". Even if you changed the taper of your wheel lug bores (not recommended) ... the socket that fits over 1" lug nuts doesn't fit into the lug nut bores of most aluminum wheels. I highly recommend the 5/8" fine thread studs & use special road race lug nuts I've found that have a 60° conical seat for aluminum wheels & only a 7/8" hex size so common sockets fit into the typically tight lug nut bores.

For race cars only ... we'll run aluminum drive plates. For Pro Touring, Autocross & Track Cars we only run steel drive plates. For those not familiar ... drive plates attach to the outer hubs & are splined. The axles are splined (differently) on both ends. The drive plate is what connects the outer splined part of the axle to the hubs to "drive" the wheels. For high power (600HP +) applications I prefer the thick Grand Nation drive plates ... but the centric hub is 3.06" and requires wheels with a 3.09" centric bore. No problem when ordering new wheels. When guys already have wheels & can't or don't want to bore the centers, we use the Mod-Lite steel drive plates that have a 2.75" centric hub & fits wheels with 2.77" & larger centric bores.

Speedway can weld on "common" race brake caliper mounts during the process. But if you want to run your Ford Explorer rear brakes, we'll need to send them along with the housing or you'll need to weld on the brackets yourself when it returns. Do those Ford Explorer rear brakes use rotors with a built in hat that slips over the studs?

[SSLance]

Originally Posted by Ron Sutton

Hey Lance,


Speedway can weld on "common" race brake caliper mounts during the process. But if you want to run your Ford Explorer rear brakes, we'll need to send them along with the housing or you'll need to weld on the brackets yourself when it returns. Do those Ford Explorer rear brakes use rotors with a built in hat that slips over the studs?

They do use a rotor that slips over the studs. The caliper mount is more like a brake backing plate than just a mount as it also holds all of the e-brake shoes and springs in place.




It's all very tight back there, I had to rotate the backing plates 180 degrees from normal mounting position to put them forward and down of the housing to get them to clear the frame and it is still very close.

That would be my concern about sending the housing off to have different ends welded onto it, making sure it would all still fit once it came back.

I'd consider switching to a different style of rear caliper if it made a switch to a full floater easier for packaging...if it wasn't too costly and I could keep my same wheels.

[SSLance]

Installed pic...

[Decline]

Wilwood makes a brake kit for the mod lite hubs that has an integrated park brake..The price is a little steep but not terrible.

http://www.wilwood.com/BrakeKits/Bra...no=140-11877-R

+1 on speedway..I had them build me a mod lite floater and weld my torque arm brackets on..The axle is a thing of beauty... Automotive artwork!

[Vegas69]

Told you so..

The tapered bearing will take up the slack and will be serviceable longer than the roller in your application. With that being said, the floater is the best long term solution. Seems like street car with a handful of autocrosses a year. That's a tough choice.