Very true. It all depends on what your doing with the car.

My diesal machanic is the one who got me into rotaries. He has from the dealer lot a 1984 gsl-se rx-7 with dealer installed 4.38 gear ratio. The car is very well taken car of. I have personally seen this car on two occations snap axles and thing is bone stock except for the gear ratio.

So what are you saying? You have a rew in your fb ( hopefully its a good engine) and you don't have traction problems nor do you get the occational snapped axle? When I first got mines running If the car is already traveling and I get on the throttle to hard in 2nd or 3rd the car start to fish tail.



What do you do with your car? drag? autocross? cruise? nice to look at not to drive



Knowlegde is power and I always like to hear other peoples input to give me different ideas( yours too) but last I looked you can not break the laws of physics... for every action theirs an equal and opposite reaction..the operative word being opposite...So with this in mind I guess I'll be falling in line

 

hey hey i got an 8.8 on my 79 and it dont feel much heavier ,

i tried to get axles for my stock rear bout dint find any alitle over 1 year ago oh well

 

I just finished my respeed 5 lug conversion. I bought the GSL SE Moser Axles to upgrade the rearend. $300. for both axles bare, plug and play. I also have a piece of 1x1 angle iron that I kerfed and welded along the top of the rear end housing to stiff things up a little. I haven't dragged raced with this setup yet. I did however snap a stock axle right at the splines drag racing about three years ago. I was running BF goodrich drag radials and launching at 5 grand. So I had that coming. Currently my turbo fb is running 270rhwp at 9 psi, I can't even imagine what 420 is like, My fb pulls like a frieght train,



I dont know what the limits of my rear end setup is, but its got to be a lot better than stock. The only way your going to break stuff is with super sticky drag radials or slicks. On street tires I thinks its a moot point, as you will overpower the tires first.

 

In my car when it was turboed running 265ish on street tires for 10000 miles and nothing hapened to my stock rear axles. I am not saying that they dont break, I have seen them broken road raving with far less power, thats just what I have experianced.



So on the rack and pinion parts. I know that the Cp Products one had problems with oil drains, in the way I do believe. Search CP Products on here and you will find some info on them.

 

Woundup is right. Street tires make all the difference. If you can't hook up you can't break anything. I have a set of bf goodrich drag radials in the garage waiting to go on the car. Maybe I will get a chance to break something when those go on.



The swap to a ford 8.8" might be inevitable. I would like to explore other options first though. Since I do not drag with the car I think that I will be in a little better situation than yourself for an upgraded rear end. If I break something no big deal. It will not be the first time for my car. When I built this car there were no recorded REW's that I could find. I had to do a lot of trial and error in putting it together.



$350, and a little time is worth the experimentation for me. The 8.8" is 700-1k commitment. One thing that is nice about ford rear ends though is that you can swap the gear ratios out pretty easily.



If I end up having to go 8.8" I will just drive up to granny's and pick one up.



Woundup, can you clarify between the different rear-ends? Which ones were stronger? Was it the earlier ones? Maybe a few more specifics would be nice.



On a side note, I think that this thread should be archived. There is a lot of good information in here.

 

I'm putting my brake kit together right now. My question to you is...what bolt size did you use for the axle plates?



I really didn't feel like swapping out everything for a Ford. I don't really like to do things the easy way anyways, so...hahaha.

 

Very true. It all depends on what you want from the car, and I'll be the first to admitt that while large clouds of smoke is impressive.............................the car is not going anywhere



I have been throught 4 other 1st gen frames and 2 2nd gens with one being a TII and I totally understand what it means to be on a budget. So I can understand why you want to step up little by little. I also do believe that you should put just enough to make it work right (and safely) for example dont use a ford 9 inch when a 10 bolt will do the job perfectly..

84 to 85 came with the thicker axles from factory....the gsl came with a better posi unit than the gsl-se



My engine was built to hit the 600hp mark, but that will more than likely be on c16 and with about 35 to 40 lbs of boost, currently I'm running 20 lbs

 

And the guy with the moser upgraded axles..You are no better off than you were with the stock axles (provided they where the 84-85 axles)

 

Really, I can tell you how they are better in three ways, 1. I now have a common 5x114 bolt pattern to choose wheels from, no gay *** spacers/adapter b.s. 2. The axles are cnc'ed from the same forged steel stock that Moser sells to all the muscle car guys, must be somewhat good, all that torque and horsepower. 3. I pulled out my stock big bearing axles when I was running 7 psi and a crappy tune, at 220 hp and they were already twisting on the splines. Now I am running 270 and they are still holding up fine.



Before you respond with some rant about spline size, remember the other half of the equation is the metal. I am sure Zbeater, who just happens to be a mechanical engineer can chime in. If they ever break I will be sure to post it up, so every one knows, I am pretty comfindent they wont anytime soon.

 

I don't think that there is anything that is cost effective about my build. Done right from the start. No small steps.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlv9xclarpU



As woundup said I am an engineer, aka outside of the box thinker. I do not like doing things that do not make sense for me. I do not plan on launching the car very hard. So why put in a larger rear? The parasitic power loss through the drivetrain is signifigantly larger with an 8.8. I want to transmit as much power to the ground as possible. It is like taking a step backwards for me. For you things might be different. It sounds like you drag your car. Good deal, not my taste. If I wanted to drag a car I would have personally picked up a mustang. The FB is a great handling car once you have performed the small little modifications. I have ridden in a few FB's that were amazing on the track. You like straight lines with lots of speed I like twisties. Different strokes for different folks. I have seen some 7's that run into the 8sec range.



We could sit here and talk theories all day. What is the fun in that? I have to do that for 8-10hrs a day at work. We are here for fun, not argument. That being said, we are still waiting for pictures.