So I just bought a 8.8 and I know the biggest downfall is the unsprung mass of the unit. Can anyone shed some light on how bad the ride quality for a street car is going to be? And is there any way to combat the poor ride if it's really that bad?

 

I didn't notice a difference when I went to the 9". On the other hand, my brakes are a lot lighter than the GSL-SE setup that I used to have, so the "polar moment" of the axle may be lower. Rearend weighs roughly 20-25% more than the GSL-SE stuff I took out thanks to a lot of lightweighting.

That said, the 8.8 is a remarkably light rearend for its size, especially if you get one out of a Mustang instead of a truck, since the trucks have much thicker tubes.

 

Ahhhhhh well I did get the one out of the explorer because I wanted the 31 spline. What kind of weight reduction did you perform on your 9 inch??

 

Aluminum centersection and pinion support, lightweight gears, light NASCAR type locker (think it's a Gforce, not sure), solid 10" rotors, aluminum calipers. I had GSL-SE pattern axles made but they didn't offer gun-drilling on flanged axles, otherwise I would have done that too. Rearend is something like 190lb.

I kind of wanted a floater rear, but I (erroneously) thought it would be more expensive, and it would have added weight. Maybe next time.

 

^ how did you go with clearnce around that big pumkin? Its a rally car right? Im guessing keeping full articulation may have required some massaging?

Just to add my input, went to a toyota hilux 8" diff. About 35kg more than the gslse diff with guru torsen, and ride quality was not affected noticeably to my suprise. If anything the weight seemed to aid turn in and forward traction.

 

It was made more "interesting" by the fact that I also wanted to move the Watts pivot down to axle centerline instead of 40mm above. I also insisted on being able to drop the centersection out without having to remove any suspension components. I have the pinion offset a half inch to the left instead of 16mm to the right like Mazda did, so that also helped a bit. I ended up extending the upper part of the Watts something like 155mm, and extending the chassis side Watts bracket on the right side down by 60mm to keep the short link fairly level. I also shaved the top of the centersection and had to redo my 3rd link a bit for clearance.








Huge thread detailing general build and other stuff is here: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/fo.../136340/page1/

 

there is days of reading in that thread. What made you stay with the watts link instead of a panhard bar for your tri link setup?

 

No room for a Panhard if I want a decent sized (read:streetable) muffler.

Plus, I have had issues with breaking Panhard brackets off, so I decided to keep it simple and just relocate the Watts to the height where I'd have put the Panhard.