Red Bull 1968 Charger AWD Hemi 6 speed

[57 Chevy AWD Truck]

Yea I like that idea, I was thinking about what front diff was in the trailblazer ss cuz it's a V8 and a pretty heavy suv. Do you know anything on locker/limited slip for these diffs? I like the holes in the new parts, makes it look professional! I might scrap my idea of using a 1500 truck front diff for one of these. Depends on axle's and such. What are you gonna do for the long side axle? Two piece with CV's and a carrier bearing like a long driveshaft in a truck? Or is it short enough for just a longer axle?

[Motorcitydak]

Thanks! It is something simple that makes the parts look a little bit better i think. The trailblazer is pretty heavy and also plenty powerful. I am not expecting any problems or complaints from this front diff. But if any come up, it will not be hard to find another one. I did not like the 1500 truck diff because of the long side tube being attached and just so large. Also the CV flanges take up a lot of room. Plus you have the axle disconnect that takes up space and adds weight.

For differentials, gear wise there is 3.42, 3.73 and 4.10 available stock, 4.56 is available in the aftermarket for I think $175 for the set, plus master install kit. Diff wise however there is no LSD available. They come as open as can be and then there is a lock-rite locker available now, which just replaces the spider gears with locking assemblies that pretty much allow 0 difference in wheel speed. I have one in the front end of my pick up truck. I can drive with just 1 wheel hub locked in and that tire will still always spin with 35 inch tall beefy tires and a 5.7 Hemi to motivate them, so they are not a good idea here. A LSD for the front end is very different than one for the rear. A front will only lock the front tires together but allow about 50% slip on acceleration ONLY. Deceleration they need to be completely open to allow you to maneuver, stop on slick surfaces or turn on grippy ones. I would guess that is why no one has made such a thing available for this diff. They are primarily in mid sized SUV's that, if they get any aftermarket work at all, are lifted with mall crawler equipment and tires and left that way until the soccer mom decides she wants something new. Then a kid will get it, put in a lunch box locker (lock rite) until he eventually does a solid axle swap. There really is no performance street driving applications except the TB SS. If there is enough support for a good front diff from that crowd, we may get lucky and get one some day but it has yet to come about

What I am thinking for that for the CV's is to pick up a one of the trailblazer cv shafts, then take my passenger side one apart. I moved the diff a little further back and towards the passenger side frame rail so even the length of the passenger side CV I have now will be too long. My thought is to have the shaft from the pass CV cut down and re-splined to fit into the TB inner CV, then that CV will fit into the diff. Here is a listing for the shafts that shows the actual parts, lengths and spline counts. They are exactly the same side to side, I assume so Chevy could save a few bucks and cut down on part numbers. Plus they are not that expensive

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PAIR-NEW-COM...098cbd&vxp=mtr

For the long side, my thoughts are to have a custom center shaft made up that will go into the diff, fill the seal then run to a carrier bearing on the drivers side. Then have that end splined to hold the other CV. Now, there are some options there. In that add, you can see that the TB CV's are male ends on everything. They are also 27 spline on the wheel ends. Also the TB wheel bearings are longer than the corvette ones I am running, plus the corvette/cadillac ones are 30 spline. So TB CV's will not fit into my wheel bearings. It will be easier and cheaper to have a male/male center shaft made up VS one with the TB required female end on the drivers side. For that reason, I believe that I will keep the stock Cadillac drivers side CV since it has the female end on it. Hudlow gear and axle is who I am planning on having do the re-spline on the pass CV and make the custom center shaft. I have the center shaft from the Cadillac and the TB (the TB one is just a stubby 11 inches tho because it has to go into the front axle disconnect) so at least I can send them those for R&D to assist in making the one I need, all I will have to do is tell them how long to make it. I could even cut and weld the 2 together then just send that to them and say make me exactly this just in 1 piece.

I do not want to use the TB front axle disconnect just to joint the front drive together. I think it would take up too much space, add weight and parts to fail plus them I would have to deal with the length issue, I doubt that it would just fall into place perfectly as I needed.

I also thought about custom CV shafts. I have researched it a little bit. While it is possible, I think that it would be money spend unnecessarily. They can run around $1000 and while rated to nice HP levels, I do not think i will need it. Even if I have 500hp, the transfer case will probably never send more than 50% to the front end. However, it is 100% variable based on where traction is so the specs show that 0-100% can be sent to the front. If that did happen, I may be in trouble.

I am completely open to suggestions here as well

[Motorcitydak]

I got a little lazy and fell behind, I did end up wrapping up some of the front diff mounts however. After I finally got the diff placed, the front was pretty simple with just a few tabs. The rear was a bit harder just because it has to be removable from the frame. In order for the engine to drop straight out of the bottom, that mount cannot be there. I welded the mount I already built to a piece of 1/8, then drilled a piece of 3/16 to be mounted on the frame. I still need to finish up that weld but the plate if mounted. One issue was that I mounted the plate with pilot holes drilled but then had to drill the frame. With the engine still in, I really did not feel like dropping it just to drill 4 holes then put it back in. I picked up one of those cheapo right angle drill attachments which did the job. Then I tapped it for 1/4-20 bolts. 4 of them attach the bracket to the frame. I still need to build a 3rd mount. I want that one on the bottom of the diff. I think that those 3 will hold it securely.

Sorry that these pictures are not the most revealing, my light was not good. Good thing is that the diff is now bolted in





More good news is that my new T-56 showed up. It is from a '99 Corvette, it has the triple/double synchro's and the MM6 gearing. I weighed this thing, 115 pounds with no oil in it



I got busy then and turned it into another one of my parts boards



Here is my SSR shaft next to the C5 vette shaft. They are nearly identical in every place where it counts. I still may need to use the SSR 1st gear and retainer setup

[Oramac]

You, sir, are out of your mind. And I mean that in absolutely the best way possible! Awesome build! I'm going to follow this to completion as well.

I've long dreamed of scratch-building a car, and seeing all your fab work really got my gears moving too. I don't have anything like the funding yet, but research can commence!

Can't wait to see the final product! It's gonna be magazine cover story worthy, I think.

[Motorcitydak]

Thanks a lot Neil! I am really happy you like it so much. One thing that I keep thinking about is the fact that I am spending WAY less money this way VS buying something to bolt in. A bolt in front suspension for my car can run $3-6,000. Believe it or not this is the cheap way. The C5 transmission is around half the price of any other T-56, the transfer case I may have $400 into. The front diff will run around $500 all done and the CV shafts are around $100. I think that in the end I may have $1500-$2000 into all of the all wheel drive parts. Maybe $1000 into the suspension parts not counting the coil overs.

Rather than just open your wallet, open your mind and think about what you want. The brackets I build come from $10 pieces of steel you can get anywhere. Start to practice fabrication and this stuff will come easily. I am sure that anyone can do it if you just dedicate your time to it.

I also am holding out hope that it will land in the pages of a magazine some day. I am getting impatient now so I am just trying to work on it all I can to finally get there, maybe get it running this summer/fall

[Oramac]

Thanks a lot Neil! I am really happy you like it so much. One thing that I keep thinking about is the fact that I am spending WAY less money this way VS buying something to bolt in. A bolt in front suspension for my car can run $3-6,000. Believe it or not this is the cheap way. The C5 transmission is around half the price of any other T-56, the transfer case I may have $400 into. The front diff will run around $500 all done and the CV shafts are around $100. I think that in the end I may have $1500-$2000 into all of the all wheel drive parts. Maybe $1000 into the suspension parts not counting the coil overs.

Rather than just open your wallet, open your mind and think about what you want. The brackets I build come from $10 pieces of steel you can get anywhere. Start to practice fabrication and this stuff will come easily. I am sure that anyone can do it if you just dedicate your time to it.

That is good to know! At this point I don't even have a garage or a welder, so I'm mostly SOL for the scratch build, but I can practice with my 68 at least.

Thanks for the tips!

[Motorcitydak]

No problem Neil, we all were there at one time. Just work your way up to it, take a class on welding or something if you get the opportunity. Something else is that most people think that you need a nice big shop with tons of equipment to do this stuff. I am doing this whole build in a tiny 2 car garage. The Charger lives next to my Lotus so I just have to push that outside when the sparks fly. Then all the tools get rolled out for the work to start. It all gets put away when I am done. The only real real issue is that I cannot do much if it is raining since that car does not get wet. Also I am not rich, pretty far from it in fact. I just have my hobbies and this is my favorite one so it is what I like to spend most of my time and money on

I made a pretty stupid mistake with some of the parts I had ordered, the transmission gear and retainer setup for the SSR shaft that I have. I sent the parts back to get a refund on them before being 100% sure that I did not need them. I assumed that the C5 would have the same 1st gear, it does not as you can see in the pics of the main shaft. The C5 just uses a lock ring and spacer which will not fit on the SSR shaft properly. Sooooooo, I had to get my stuff shipped back to me, should have it back tomorrow.

I need to get my adapter setup going so that I can wrap up this trans and transfer case. It looks to be going quite well rite now. To keep things lighter, I just put the main shaft back into the trans case. This is with the Viper mid plate, C5 input shaft and SSR 32 spline main shaft. I put the 3-4 gears and synchro assy back on only because I needed to press the main shaft front bearing on and I did not want to have to take it off again later



Then the main and tail housings went back on. Now the trans only weighs about 40 pounds so it is a lot easier to move around. I am going to gut the transfer case as well to make that easier to move around too. Also the C5 tail has a seal at the back of it which seals perfectly to the SSR main shaft



Here is the 545rfe tail housing that I have to adapt this thing all together. This one has a transmission mount which is nice. I am very pleased with the way this is going



and then I stabbed the two together. Obviously the transfer case will be flipped the other way. There is just under 5 3/4 inches between the 2 mating surfaces. The 545rfe tail is 4 3/16 so I have some room to make up but that is good news. Also if I need it to be shorter, I can cut down the SSR main shaft buy quite a bit to make it fit perfectly. Cannot wait to see this all together!!!

[Motorcitydak]

I did some more work on the front diff, finally got the new lower mount done. I had to place the mount here because further forward or back would end up in the LCA mounts. I also did not like having just the 2 mounts under the bolts so I had to utilize the drain plug as well. Doing that made this mount very rigid.





For the other side of this mount, here is what I built. I wanted to brace the front and rear LCA mounts again because I cut the old one out to get the diff to fit. This mount does both things that I needed, brace the mounts and hold onto the lower mount. I also designed all the brackets so that I can lift the diff straight up to get it out of the car. The suspension crossmember thing has to be removed first to do that tho



Still need to finish up the welds around this tube but that needs to be done with the diff out which I will do later



The diff is very rigidly mounted now with these 3 mounts. Should have no problem living with all the traction it has but also all the bushings are rubber so they will allow some insulation and movement for the diff

I just got these plates of 3/4 aluminum which I am working on to make my adapter plates for the transmission. It is taking quite a while but I hope to have them done sooner or later

[bonecrrusher]

Holy crap - I did not know you where going with a manual trans.

So you have a c5 - t56 with an SSR main shaft - a CTS or STS front diff - what is the transfer case out of?

[Motorcitydak]

Yep, I had first thought of using a 545rfe 5 speed auto transmission but I really do hate auto's. I would never be happy driving the car wishing that I had a 3rd pedal.

Rite with the transmission, really the only part specific to the C5 T-56 is the tail shaft. I also needed the triple/double cone syncrho's so it was cheaper to just buy the C5 trans. Then it has a Viper mid plate, SSR main shaft and 1st gear with its retainer.

I have the Cadillac STS front diff but decided not to run it because there are no other gear ratio's available for it. I will be running 4.56's. I switched to the front diff from a Trailblazer/Envoy then had to re-do all of my mounts.

The transfer case is a NV147 from a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 32 spline input from some Chevy application

[bonecrrusher]

That is quite the combination of parts and cars trucks and jeeps!

Would the Magnum T56 4wd case help out at all?

[Motorcitydak]

I have never even heard of a T56 Magnum 4x4 trans. I know that Rockland Standard Gear will do a 4wd kit now but it cost too much for me

[bonecrrusher]

that RSG trans is what I am talking about. I googled it once and that trans was like 6 grand, lol.

[Motorcitydak]

Yeah, a little much for me if I ever want to finish up this car. They gave me a price of either $1400 or $1600 for the parts to make my Viper trans adapted to 4x4 with the 27 spline shaft. I could have used my Viper box for the 32 but it would have been another $1000+ in parts

[Motorcitydak]

This has taken me a lot more time than I wanted but rest assured that I have still been working on this car. Those 3/4 aluminum plates have been taking up quite a bit of time. The biggest pain was that I had to carve 6+ inch diameter holes in that stuff, then line up the cap screws and studs.

This was about a week ago when I finally got those holes cut in there



Then a lot more of the floors lost their battle to be a part of the finished car and I started to set the whole thing into place







Of course then I had to take ground clearance into consideration...but also the floor and passenger seat.....then there were interference issues with the cap screws and stud locations in my plates. I had to rotate my 2nd tail shaft a bit and redrill the studs for the transfer case plate. It all looks like it will work out in the end even if more of the floor is going to be hacked up for the front driveshaft



This is the clearance under the transfer case. It only hangs about 1/4 inch below the level of my frame rail connector. I think that a nice skid plate is still in order for this tho. A decent speed bump would rip my transfer case to pieces. If you cannot tell, this car is pretty dam low and this is with it at ride height

[ent72olds]

My mind feels like scrambled eggs everytime I check in on you Steve! I love scrambled eggs! Keep on movin' my brother!

[linkstar69]

Great adaptation of parts.

[Motorcitydak]

Haha, awesome. Just had eggs for breakfast, maybe that has something to do with it. Thanks a lot guys. I have my front diff at a shop getting rebuilt and new gears. Turns out that the one side bearing did spin. Looks like it leaked most if not all of its fluid and the bearing just started falling apart. Id bet that thing made an awful lot of noise when it was still on the road. It will still be an open diff but it is getting a 4.56 gear! I am hoping to have it back in a week or so then I need to work on the front driveshaft and trans mount

[bonecrrusher]

Nice adapters - are you going to cut them down any more?

[ryeguy2006a]

You are doing an amazing job man. Such a unique project.