A Trip to Fayettville for Inspiration and Parts 


I drove the eight hours up to Fayetteville Arkansas to visit my friend Jack and all I got was this rear-end 

So, Jack is pretty much the entire reason I am building this car. He's the brother of my friend Jeff who I've known for the past 4 years or so and when he and his friend Cory came down and brought a hot rod to the Lone Star Round-up two years ago, I was hooked. He's been telling me I ought to come up Fayetteville and visit sometime so I can get some ideas for my car, meet some great people, and maybe pick up some parts for my car. This past weekend I finally took the plunge.

I'll tell you more about the actual trip in the Family Blog but, for now, I'll focus on the goodies I brought back with me.

High on my list was to find a rear-end - I was ideally looking for a Ford 9 inch or 8 inch. For those of you who don't know, the Ford 9 inch is a classic rear end that went in millions of cars from the late 50's to the 80's - it is universally regarded as one of the strongest and best performing rear ends ever made. Not surprisingly, when I called around to various salvage yards in Austin, they never had them. Apparently, there are a few speed shops in town that buy up every one they recover and rebuild them for race cars. Since a rebuilt 9 can cost almost a thousand dollars or more, buying a new one wasn't really an option. The 8 inch rear end is kind of the "little brother" - plenty strong for my needs and a bit more plentiful and less expensive.

Jack had a friend who wrecked his '66 Mustang and we thought the 8 inch out of that one might be a good option. After cutting it out from under the old Mustang, however, we determined that it wouldn't be wide enough to let me lower the body of my car as low as I wanted it to go. So, Jack called his friend, LD, who owns an amazing old junkyard and we went hunting. We loaded up the truck with two floor jacks, an oxy-acetylene torch rig, and the Mustang rear end for comparison purposes:



LD's junkyard is a site to behold. There is not a car in the entire place that is any younger than 1965 and they are all lined up like they were on a new car lot:



After a little poking around, we found an old 1960 Fairlane that looked like the perfect donor. The Fairlane is a full-size car so the rear-end is wider than the Mustang which should give me all the room I need to get the body channeled as low as I want it to go.



We jacked her up and fired up the torch. Jack was very intent on letting me do everything - fortunately I had learned to cut with a torch in our class and I was up for the task... or so I thought. In class, we weren't exactly laying on our stomachs with our heads under a rusty old car trying to cut 40 year old bolts - this was a little new to me. Also new was the presence of dry leaves which I quickly caught on fire with the torch. The first couple of times it was easy to put them out, but one time, they kept burning and caught some of the old upholstery on fire. LD was nearby raking leaves - he simply looked over at Jack and I and said calmly "you boys better get some water" and went on raking. We ran back and forth to the house getting buckets of water and finally put it out.

The rear-end took a while to cut out but once we dragged it out, Jack and I knew we were looking at a 9 inch! Very exciting to get one of these bad boys! LD only wanted $160 for it so I definitely got a great deal. We loaded it up into the back of the truck along with a steering box and column we found - ready for the trip back to Austin. Here it is with its driveshaft and there's the Mustang rear-end in front of it before we dropped it off at Jack's house. It's rusty but nothing a little grinding can't fix:

 

Posted: Mon - October 31, 2005 at 09:24 PM          

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