Thanks for the input Lance! I'll look into that, if it does work I would probably be able to use all the original ls e- brake cable mounts as the ls brakes were originally front mounted and the cables pull from the rear. In hindsight I should have played more with caliper orientation before welding on ends but I went with it knowing there was an issue an would no matter what work my way out of it. If it doesn't work I have no problem notching the frame for caliper clearance, I'll keep everyone up to date.

I've been working a lot of hours so not much to update. I did come across a solution for the ebrake cable mount at the caliper while searching for ideas. The mount is made for 10/12 bolt rear ls brake swaps. Since I'm using the 10/12 bolt flange pattern I can make these work. I will have to clearance a little from the bracket because of the Ford big bearing and due to clearancing I am going to add a small brace on the bracket but I definitely think this is a great bolt on solution for anyone with a 10/12 bolt wanting to run rear ls brakes . While searching I found that the guy selling them on ebay is/was a member on here http://www.montecarloss.com/community/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showprofile&User=3512 Sorry for the blurry 2nd picture and the 3rd picture is from his ebay add ebay bracket link

Still working on details but I'm slowly chipping away. I have another non car shop toy on the way so I've been clearing room for it, been trying to get going on some details for a detached garage, and dealing with all the interesting people on Facebook selling my camper which is gone now. So this is as far as I've got.

I didn't want to spend the money and mess with a 3/16" tubing bender and flaring tool so I ordered the Monte carlo ss brake lines from inline tube $34 from ebay brake lines The 8.8 and 7.5 10 bolt were close enough in shape that I knew I could make it look decent and functional. I did have to cut, weld, and tap a tab for the rubber brake hose $16 brake hose to solid line mount.

I welded 2 a-body brake line axle tabs $20 to the axle tubes axle tabs and fabbed up some tabs to go from solid line to the stoptech 98-02 caliper line. A local place in town will do the Flare for me. Here's a few pictures.







I was also able to get the e brake cable mount sorted out. I was just using the crusty ls brake cables to test it out and plan to use all new Monte Carlo ss e brake lines and cables as I have a plan on how to make them work like factory.







It's probably not the best solution to the problems but so far I'm mostly happy with it. Still not happy with the welds but it is what it is.

Well ran into a little trouble today on the brake line. I ordered 3/16 stainless monte carlo lines, my plan was to cut the double inverted flare off, put the m10x1.0 98-02 ls1 camaro bubble flare end on. I went to 3 different places in town and they all tried the bubble flare on the stainless and it went bad every time. I just spent $30 more to order regular brake lines for the Monte so the $33 ss lines are a waste. SS brake lines sounded nice but more trouble than there worth. Lesson learned!

Edit to the above. While going to pick my new garage toy up I found a place near by and the guy was able to bubble flare my lines, best part he didn't charge me anything. Now all the brake line stuff is out of the way. I panicked to soon but luckily both places I ordered from were able to cancel my order.

My new non automotive garage toy.

Off topic but I have been wanting to delve into machining and eventually once I build my skills do some small steam engine stuff. My new Precision Mathews 1022v lathe isn't the biggest 10" dia x 22" long is all it will turn. I didn't buy it for the automotive hobby but it will help. I've had about 10 different things made here lately by friends helping me out and this could have done everyone of them. Now back to the regular schedule rearend program.

I think it was just last week we talked about that lathe. It took longer for me to get two bearings from Idaho via UPS than have that lathe shipped from Pittsburgh.
Might say something about Matthew's as a business. I think you will be more than happy with the size.

Stainless brake lines. I think in most cases it's the way to go but sure can be a PITA to need to bend, flare and make leak proof. When a line lock was added to the 86 it was laid on top the proportioning valve. Classic Tube stainless lines had previously been installed everywhere. The mating of the line lock to the prop valve required six stainless, intrigue double flares. I learned a lot about stainless 3/16" tubing.

Available today is the copper/nickle line, have used it many times, makes braking lines much easier to do. I would just use stone guard on it where exposed. Just like the factory lines. By the way you can give credit to Volvo for the copper/nickle. They got tired of the steel lines rotting in short order in Scandinavia. Now most European cars are using it. And it can be polished pretty. I saw it being used on a Schwartz chassis
Did a brake line replacement on an older Dodge truck, bubbles original. Bought adapters that allowed bubble to mate to double, and used copper/nickle.

First time i saw copper/nickle was when I used it for 1/2" fuel lines in the 86, instead of alum or steel or stainless tubing. Only FedHill was importing copper/nickle from Europe at one time, calling it Cunifer. Now every parts house has China copper/nickel brake line to sell. It's about all the garages use anymore. Easy to do any flare, even bubble. You just need to buy a very expensive tool to do the bubbles well.
https://store.fedhillusa.com/

E-brake. I think you packaged a setup that finally passed my approval, good job. Being stick cars we know how important the e-brake is.
Bob

I've not got much done lately but today I was able to get a few coats of the gloss black por 15 on the housing. After seeing the rearend in gloss black I'm glad I'm covering it with chassis satin black, not a fan of the gloss but that's just me.

I mic'd all my carrier and pinion shims tonight and wrote the measurements on them, I think it will help it go quicker when I do get to it. I clearanced my pinion set up bearing to slide on pinion and lightly ran a file over the back of ring gear to make sure there were no burs. Hopefully get it setup this weekend.

The first time I did the 8.5 the insides I brush painted with Rustoleum Damproof primer. That qt of quality enamel primer i store bought 20 years ago. They now call it Industrial. I would say it''s near Glyptal in character. My Dart block is entirely glyptal, Tom's ZZ4 also, got a qt at Eastwood at dented price, cheap.
https://www.rust-oleum.eu/product/769-damp-proof-rust-primer

https://www.eastwood.com/glyptal-red-brush-on-1-qt.html

On Weds the parts got their final cleaning, and the pinion is now in it's final resting place. Seal is in and 19"on the bearings, 125 on the big nut.
Bolted the pinion depth gauge into the carrier for the last time just to verify all the tomfoolery done to figure out the pinion shim was just that. The + or - .005" of the pinion head thickness makes it hard to set something to .001.
Carrier shims tweaking to shoot for .007" BL and .008"-010" preload. As you will find out that's the PITA . Both numbers i think are possibly compromised. You give a little to get a little.
Hoping to have the carrier caps torqued for the last time tomorrow afternoon.

By the way, a red driven gear is going in, the gray coming out.
Bob

Coming right along and looking good!! Best of luck this weekend.

Got to use the lathe for my first auto thing. The handle on the race driver was way to short so I had a scrap piece of 6061 that I took a few minutes to turn down on the end. There are other ways to get around this but it was nice having it to make it easier.

I misplaced my pinion spacer so I needed to figure out a starting point. My local lead on a pinion depth gauge didn't work out so I figure I would try the ratech pinion depth tool. After using it I would not waste the $25 if I had to do it again, in my opinion it's hard to get a dead on accurate read with the setup using a dial caliper to find depth and the pinion gear head is not machined flat. I preloaded the pinion bearing to 20in/lbs and tried out the tool.




Using the tool and the math I came up with a not very confident .030" pinion spacer. Out of curiosity in the 31 page ford gear install manual ( M-4209-8.8 8.8 Ring and Pinion Installation INSTRUCTION SHEET https://performanceparts.ford.com/download/instructionsheets/FORDINSTSHTM-4209-8.PDF ) it says if you have any questions call the Ford Racing technical line so I figured I would see what they say. What seemed to be a really knowledgeable guy said on the 8.8 when you have no pinion spacer to start with go with a .028" shim and then read your pattern from there. He also said if I had any questions to email a picture of the pattern and they would get me going the right way. Never been a Ford guy but seems their Ford Racing tech line is pretty handy. After the ratech tool an talking to him I figured I would just start with the .030" pinion shim.

Even using the expensive pinion depth tool the top of the GM pinion gear was a + or - .005", a near .010" difference on the depth. Made it a guessing game to configure the shim needed. The GM pinion gear had no marking, indicator for installed depth. The original .039" shim I saved from the original factory install and reused it when i did the reinstall of the 3.73.
Because that 3.73 set was well seasoned, many miles, the ring gear teeth are polished and some steel is gone on both gears. I tried less shim thicknesses and found just throw the original .039 in and be done with it. A pattern check says they are OK. Backlash set it on the tighter side at .0065, Again cause the set is well seasoned, no more run-in wear.

The 4.11 yukon I just pulled out did have a pinion depth number on the head, it ended up being the original .039" plus a .007" additional shim. The T&S tool made that setup easy. And that gear set had great wear patterns on both the drive and coast at 15k miles.

Make sure the pinion depth shim seats nicely on the gear. The GM .039 shim has tabs in the center that touch the gear to set the side play, slop. The tabs become bent up to compensate for the radius of the bevel on the pinion when that shim gets crushed by the bearing install. Most aftermarket shims don't have tabs in the center and the shims ID is not sloppy on the gears. When you install the bearing the inner area contacting the bevel gets distorted. To get a .037 need several thin shims. The factory .039 was the way to go,. Would have been nice to have a .037 factory to try though. Later found a pinion shim kit for the 8 1/2" 92244512, to late now.

Thought the same thing about that Ratech, lucky for me i can borrow a T&S.
Bob

After coming up with a pinion shim starting size and setting pinion preload I needed to install the gear on the carrier. The gear on carrier is a slight press fit but I don't have a press at the moment so I put the carrier in the deep freezer and ring gear in a 300° toaster for a little while and they went right together and I tightened the ring gear bolts to 100 ft/lbs.



The original carrier shims were .259+.030=.289 on the driver side and a .285 on the passenger side for a total of .574. I figured I would start with that so I put the .289 on the drive side and while trying to hammer in the passenger side single .285 cast iron shim it broke in about 4 pieces. If carrier shims are unknown ford says to achieve 0 bearing preload then add .006 to each for a total of .012 bearing preload. "Ford Rearend guys" say to use a feeler gauge size the same as one of your shims, in my case a .017 feeler is what I picked. You keep stacking shims in until you get a drag on the .017 feeler ,remove your feeler , replace with a .017 shim and you are supposedly at 0 carrier bearing preload. Then I hammered a .012 shim in for the preload. I ended up with a total of .538 carrier shims. The carrier will not come out by hand at this point and needs to be pryed out gently with 2 pry bars.

The first time I set it up I had 20 in/lbs of pinion bearing preload (ford says 16-28 in/lbs on new bearings), .030 pinion shim, a safe .259 shims on the drive side and .279 shims on the passenger side. I checked the backlash and It was at .015" (Ford says .008-.012). My shims were one single .259 on drive side and on passenger side it consisted of .104, .104, .021, .021, .017, .012 .

So a couple of days ago when I was doing all this I tried all kinds of different combinations just to see how it all moved around as far as the pattern and what effects everything had on each other and for some reason I like to punish myself. The gear marking compound was garbage. I tried everything the internet has to offer to make it better as far as thinning with oil, putting it on heavier, put it on lighter, put more pressure on pinion while turning ring gear and nothing worked to help with a clear pattern from the gear. I can see a pattern but it is very faint, at this point I think I have it where I want it but will hopefully know for sure when the gm marking compound gets here. I'm just not confident enough until I can really see it. I thought it could be something else going on but after reasearch everyone that had the same looking gear as me fixed it by getting better marking compound. The pictures below are not mine but show the difference in marking compounds. The before picture is exactly how my gear looked as far as compound, if you look really hard or when shinning a flash light you could see a faint pattern.

As I said earlier I'm pretty sure I had an acceptable pattern but i can never leave well enough alone so I went to my thickest pinion shim setup and figured I would work my way down just so I could watch how every move affects the pattern. I've watched a lot of setup videos and assumed that all gears are created equal. While making moves to backlash and pinion I noticed my pattern wasn't moving like I thought it should based on some of the YouTube videos I watched and some things I've read.

So that sent me down another rabbit hole where I found out about face hobbing (2 cut) and face milling (5 cut) and how the different processes require different moves to effect the pattern. The gist of it is that hob milling is a more efficient method and also produces quieter gears but it's a very expensive machine to do it and that's why mainly oems use it and a lot of the aftermarket gears are face milled due to the high machine cost. Interestingly Ford now produces the newer 8.8 gear sets being hobb milled and due to issues in the machining process the 9" gears are face milled. Interesting stuff that could throw a person for a loop. Here is a great ford article on the subject https://www.diyford.com/ford-axle-ring-pinion-assembly-guide/ .

Here is a interesting diagram



Here is pictures of my gear setup so far as moving from the largest pinion spacer I have going down until I get where I need. The first pattern is .037 pinion spacer, .010 backlash.
Drive


Coast


The next setup I went too was .034 pinion spacer and .009 backlash.
Drive


Coast


The new gm marking compound works great. I only tried those 2 patterns and ran out of time last night. Hopefully I will have time to continue mid week with moving the pattern out of the root. Any discussion, conversation, or adivce on this topic would be appreciated.

Interesting 13 minute video describing carrier bearing preload and the math behind it as trained by gm.

I'm continuing my gear install, the last pattern I posted above was .034" pinion shim with .009" backlash. This is the pattern I just came up with a .032" pinion shim and .009" backlash. I don't feel like there is much movement of the pattern between the .034" and .032" shim. My next move due to the shims I have is a .029" pinion shim and we will see what happens.
Drive with .032 shim


Coast with .032 shim

.029 pinion shim .006 backlash
Drive


Coast

I'm really wanting to try a .030 or .031 pinion shim and I can't achieve it with the shims I have so I ordered more which will be here Saturday morning. Ford says on my gears .008-.012 backlash. Last picture above was a true .0065" backlash so with my available shims I opened the back lash up to .010" with the previous .029" pinion shim and below is the pattern. I feel like it didn't have move effect on the drive but did move the pattern towards the heel on the coast.
Drive



Coast

I had a .030 round shim that was for something else but it fit pretty good on the pinion just as a way to test .
.030 shim/ .009 backlash
Drive

Coast


.030 shim /.010 backlash
Drive

Coast

Seems that I went to the other end of the spectrum and went too far the other way on the pinion shim.
.027" pinion shim .008" backlash
Drive


Coast

Quick update, after going through the patterns and reading online I'm a little confused by pattern movement and how it moves. I have time and want this done right so I figured I would call the Ford Performance tech line to see what they thought. They gave me their gear gurus email kkot@ford.com and told me he was the man on anything ford gear related and he would get me set. We have been swapping back a few emails of pictures and specs of gear patterns that he ask for and now awaiting his answer.

I finally ordered my axles from Strange yesterday so now I have every piece to assemble my rearend. Here should be the final cost breakdown if someone did this themselves. The numbers below are with tax and shipping.

Housing $80
Sandblast $50
Coil spring pads $47
Control arm brackets $111
Housing ends, T bolts, Bearings, Spacers $333
Bumpstops and brackets $54
Oil slinger washer for pinion bearing $8
Solid pinion spacer $17
Ring and pinion, Traction lok, Install kit $532
Upr girdle $150
Por 15 and VHT chassis black $52
Axles and wheel studs $386
Time $$$$$$$$$$$$'

Total is $1822 for the rearend

After going through all the patterns Ken Kot from Ford felt .032 pinion shim and .009 backlash was good. Not the one I would have chose, I felt like the pattern was a little to close to the root but I'll go with him as I'm pretty sure he has a little more knowledge and experience than me. One thing I have seen is that ford gear setup patterns across the web are not very consistent and everyone says with ford gears you have to be way off before they make noise.

So I used the por15 and vht chassis black on the rear end and the next phase of this is the brakes. You can't buy new rear calipers but I pulled a good set at the yard but am still going to rebuild them. My question is what is a good caliper paint?