Rear End
The rear end that I
am using is out of a 1985 SVO Mustang. The rear end comes factory with a 5 bolt pattern and 11 inch disk breaks and 3.73 gear. The 1985 SVO rear end is a 7.5 inch rear end. You may be wondering why I chose the smaller less stout rear end for my Cobra project. Due to the light weight of the Cobra (2000 pounds) the rear end will get much less punishment than if it were installed in a Mustang. Since I won't be drag racing the car we should see many years of use out of it. Here are a few pictures of it installed in our Cobra.
I wanted to update this section a little. Since installing the rear end I have run into a few issues.
I bought the rear end second hand. It was in pretty bad condition visually but I figured the internals would be fine. Well I recently figured out that the rear was in terrible condition. The Traction Lock unit recently started making some very odd sounds when corning. In the straights it was fine. I also recently found another 7.5 inch rear from a 85 5.0 Mustang. It has 3.08 gears and seems to be in good condition. the great thing is that you can swap out the 5 lug axles and disc brakes onto the 3.08 rear end. I'll be doing this conversion very soon because Spring is on our heels. I'm also looking forward to having longer gears. The 3.73 rear end was too much for the street. If I was simply swapping gears I'd go with a 3.27 or 3.55 rear end. However I couldn't pass up the deal on the 3.08. Seems like they are a dime a dozen unlike the beefed up 8.8 axles that everyone wants.
Since I'll be changing rear ends I'll also need to change speedometer gears for more info on speedometer gear selection check out this web site.
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