I'm getting ready to make the frame for Barb"s 53 Studebaker Starliner.Does anybody know the width wheel flange to wheel flange for a Jag rear end. The stock Stude rear end is 58 1/2" . I know a 68-83 Corvette is 59 1/2" I did a search and didn't find anything or maybe I missed it. Any help appreciated, Thanks, Steve
The Jag XJ6 rear ends are about 61"...maybe 61 1/2"....but can be narrowed "fairly" easily. The earlier Jag sedans and XKE $$$ from the 60's used the same design but were narrower as produced.......as narrow as 56" or so, IIRC. Ray
not sure of track width but look into markVII or t bird/cougar rears and probabally easier to find newer parts make for eaiser parts to repair both feature fords 8.8 that is almost bullet proof and there are tons of gears for them
All of what you say is true...except it's MK VIII not MKII, but they are not "swap friendly" for most chassis. Their tread width is about 61" or so, and the bolt pattern is not the standard Ford 4.5"...I think it is 4.25. While they do drive and ride nice in their original application, the crossmember assembly is very bulky in stock form and takes up a lot of space, much more than a Jag or Vette. Ray
Thanks for the chart Keep I don't want a bulky lookin rear end as the Stude is a small car I'll have some measurements to check what will work (Jag or Vette ) Steve
Here is mine on a t-bucket. I have an 85 XJS rear that is 61. Just need to work out the back spacing on the wheels. These are 16x10 with 5in bs. With the 16's I could have went a bit more on the backspacing but at the time I ordered them I did not know that.
I will post these in another tread also http://irsforum.boardhost.com/index.php http://home.bresnan.net/~dazed/JaguarIRS2.html http://www.snowwhiteltd.com/products.htm http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=381637 http://www.ozrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41533 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24785 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77729 http://www.ozrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=46481 http://www.ozrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=341485 http://www.ozrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37931&start=15 http://classicjaguar.com/systembronze.html
As one who's currently swapping a crossbred MN12/FN10 Thunderbird/Mark VIII rearend ('89 SC subframe and pumpkin, '94 Mark arms and axles, '02 Explorer rear cover, etc etc etc.) into a '64 Country Sedan, let me add a few remarks. It's not exactly 'traditional' but hopefully it'll be useful to someone. It's a more modern design than the Jag, with more rubber and nicely broad-based control arms and it doesn't use the axle as a locating link. Not as elaborate as, say, an E38/E39 BMW rearend but those are even harder to make fit. Yes, the lug pattern is 5x4.25. You can swap in the '03-04 Mustang Cobra hubs. They are expensive (considerably more expensive than BMW parts, for instance.) You can also redrill the 'Bird/Mark hubs, but the hub pilot is also smaller and needs to be sleeved to the customary Ford 2.775 if you care. Ford parts availability in general is always bad unless you're talking about an F150, anything that wasn't built in 400K/year quantities, Ford will routinely start discontinuing parts at 5 years. Reason enough not to buy a new one, IMO. Some of the bushings, mounts, bolts, brackets, etc. are NLA, others can be had only by buying the entire assembly it's installed into at some obscene sum, others like the hubs and diff snout mounts are just ridiculously expensive by themselves. You end up buying extra used subframes just to find batches of good used parts. Fortunately the control arm bushings on these things seem to hold up very well, the hat part of the subframe-to-body mount somewhat less so but good ones can be found (if you've got a 'Bird or Mark, loosen the rear subframe bolts and spin the hats 90 degrees every 30K, they'll appreciate it.) The toe-control links on the front of the LCAs are always trashed but they're available as aftermarket replacements. I'm trying to have at least three good sets of everything on the shelf. 'Birds used cast iron lower arms and coil springs and many had drum brakes. Marks used aluminum arms and airbags. 'Bird SCs and Marks and some V8 'Birds had discs. I'm using Mark arms with the spring pocket adapted for a coilover (and Porsche Cayenne calipers on custom discs, but that's another story.) SCs and some V8s got an iron 8.8 pumpkin, SCs were Trac-Lok, mine's got 3.27 gears. Marks got an aluminum 8.8 pumpkin same as the Mustang Cobras, but hopeless 3.07 open gears. Most 'Birds get an iron 7.5 that's not worth bothering with. The weak point in the 8.8 is the beercan-thick aluminum rear cover in all passenger-car IRS 8.8s. The '02-up Explorer uses a MASSIVELY beefier 8.8 IRS pumpkin but it's different in almost every respect. The cover will bolt to the earlier cases and the mounts are much better but it takes some fab work to come up with a way of getting the isolators between the MN12 subframe rails. Working on that tonight, in fact. Using BMW parts 'cause they're cheaper and easier to get than Ford. I modified the front legs of the subframe, lowering and narrowing the mount pads a bit, to center them on the Galaxie frame rails. This took a lot of measuring and some jig fabrication but it's worked out really well. The SC subframes at least, and maybe other early ones, have an extra reinforcement channel inside the front subframe crossmember. Later Mark subframes I've cut up do NOT have this. In the wagon's case it doesn't matter because the modified legs have some external gusseting on them. The bulk of the subframe means the stock gas tank location is a problem. The 'Bird and Mark have the fuel tank in front of the rear suspension, extending all the way across the car under the driveshaft (this is a typical layout in newer cars.) I'll be doing something similar, getting 25gal capacity between the frame rails is going to take some creativity but some basic dimensional calcs indicate it's possible. If you've ever seen the funny big nut with the plastic cap on the forward lower control arm bolt on one of these suspensions and wondered 'Why?" it's so that the bolt won't puncture the plastic gas tank in a rearend collision. Ford cheaped out on the MN12/FN10 cars and used a one-piece driveshaft; the length of the shaft ended up causing critical-speed problems and speed-limiting the cars to 115mph or so. I've got a late GT500 driveshaft and some other bits, I'm planning to run a two-piece shaft with a 1330 at the front, a CV at the rear, haven't decided whether the middle gets the GT500 CV or a Cardan. Once again, this is fairly typical of late-model practice. The IRS assembly is a reasonable fit in the '64 (I had the rear wheels made with an appropriate offset) but it's far harder to narrow than the Jag or some other designs. I think it'd be possible to take 2.5in out of it by slicing the subframe down the middle, but that's about it. I'm not planning on changing directions on the wagon build, but I am planning to pick up rears out of an XJ40/X300 Jag and a mid '90s Lexus GS300 just for comparison/trial-fit purposes at the next Pick-n-Pull half-price weekend. Both are quite well-represented in the scrapyards, both have better parts availability than the Ford, and both are somewhat more compact.
JEM....thanks for the commentary.......lots of good info...sounds like using one of these is even "worse" than I thought. I had looked them over several times, even had a damaged '90 Supercoupe with low miles to part out, but in the end, sold it for parts. I currently have an XJS setup and C4 vette stuff to play with. You certainly get Gold Stars for effort and perserverance......Best Wishes with your project. Ray
Thanks...sometimes I think if I had a Leno Wallet I'd do, for the hell of it, a '61 wagon with truckarms, a '62 with something like the Ridetech 4-link, a '63 with a Jag XJ40 rear, and my current '64 and see which I like best. But, absent the ability to buy it all done, I'd be somewhere around 120 by the time they were all on the road.
Anybody know the going price for a good used jag or vette rear. I'm in northern Minnesota not much close by, and the freight will probably be more than the rear end Steve
When the Pick-n-pull self-pull yards are having a half-price sale the whole thing goes out the door for $150 + various taxes and fees, total around $180. I've now got the removal of the IRS from a pre-88 XJ down to about a 20-minute job: a) cut the exhausts behind the cage b) cut the driveshaft just forward of the input flange c) cut the trailing-arm mounts off the floorpan (cut along the pan above the arm) d) cut the cage mounts At this point (maybe sooner if one or more of the rubber cage mounts tears loose) the cage falls to the ground and you cut the brake lines and disconnect the parking-brake cable. This approach requires a battery Sawzall, two batteries, a decent inventory of long 14tpi blades, and PB Blaster or equivalent lube. The XJS takes a few minutes longer, you need to unbolt the anti-roll bar from the car's floorpan. Do not cut the trailing-arm mounts or remove the sway-bar clamp nuts before doing the under-car stuff. The four rubber cage mounts tend to come apart at inopportune times and you don't want the thing to fall on you. The trailing-arms and sway bar (if so equipped) will help restrain the thing if the cage mounts separate. It's not worth trying to unbolt the trailing-arm rubber mounts or cage mounts. The trailing-arm mounts are invariably rusted to the floorpan, and the cage mounts deteriorated beyond usability. I haven't yet pulled a complete XJ40/X308 assembly, it looks like you need to deal with the exhaust and the driveshaft then if memory serves you've got two fore-aft bolts in back and two vertical bolts in front and the upper spring/shock mount up in the fender. The mounts hold up better than the earlier cars and you would be better off unbolting all this stuff than destroying it.
there is a fab shop in florida that makes mounts for putting these into ford pick ups ( I wanna put one in my f 100) the trick is to use the mustang gt hubs to get 5 on 4 1/2 http://www.team321.com/truckirs/TEAM321TruckIRSInstall.html
I kinda like their setup, their bracketry isn't pretty but it looks stout and it preserves the stock subframe isolators. I've seen pix of some F100 installations where they've just welded the subframe to the truck frame. They're not Mustang GT hubs, the GTs have solid axles. The hubs you need come from the '98-04 Cobras, which have an IRS that shares a few basic parts, it's similar in concept to the 'Bird/Mark IRS but quite different in actual design. http://www.summitracing.com/parts/FMS-M-1109-A/ That's $160 each hub...you can buy them as '03 Cobra replacement parts but the price is about the same. If you've got access to the right tools the MN12/FN10 hubs can be drilled 5x4.5, ideally you also have a lathe to make a sleeve to fatten the center pilot out to 2.775in too...
If as I have been told, Jaguar uses a standard Chevy yoke and U Joint for their rear drive axles, then why couldn't you use 1966 to 1969 Corvair (tubular) half shafts in the Jag rear? The rear track of a '66 Corvair was 57".
Even if the track width is as stated, the width of all the other parts, hubs, differential case and such would most certainly be different and therefore not likely a bolt-in. I can't recall from memory the diameter of Corvair axle shafts, but the diameter is relevant on a Jag due to the coil over placement. The Corvair axles might be more easily modifiable for this purpose, depending on their actual OE dimensions. Ray
Anyone out there that knows the width of the xj 40 axle? Planning on putting a jag axle on my -57 Chevy Panel truck 61" wide would be perfect
I'm puting a jag rear in my 56 chevy panel soon,lots of good info on the 67-72 chevy pickup site. Post build pics here it sounds cool.
reviving an old thread....... and for what it is worth, a link~ http://blog.phrog.org/2011/09/13/jaguar-rear-end-irs-specifications/
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