That means a broken axle, along with the wheel and tire, can come completely off the car. By comparison, the Ford 8.8 and GM 10/12 bolt axles are held in the housing by C-clips inside the differential case. If an axle should break the wheel will stay attached to the housing. The 9-inch uses pressed-on bearings and lock rings on the axles, which are held in the housing with retainers bolted to the flanges on the axle tubes. Another important issue is the method of retaining the axles. By comparison the Salisbury design, like the later Ford 8.8 and others, have the third member components mounted in the axle housing, making gear installation and adjustment much more complicated. Referred to as the Hotchkiss style, the case containing the third member, or the ring-and-pinion assembly, of the 9-inch is removable as a unit. When going straight the spider gears don’t spin (note the alignment marks) and the side gears turn at the same speed. Arrow A points to the side gears, arrow B points to the spider gears. They knew a good thing when they saw it and realized the advantages to the design of the 9-inch Ford rearend and made some improvements to make a good thing better. But everything from individual parts to complete rear ends are readily available from Strange. One might think that since the 9-inch went out of production when Ronald Reagan was president parts might be hard to find. Here a dial indicator is being used to determine the backlash, or the play between the gears. The technicians at Strange have the procedure down. Properly setting up a ring-and-pinion is practically an art form. Our final reason for making the change is that the custom width housing will allow us to fit the wheels and tires we have planned without modifying the fenders or wheel wells-all things considered a new housing was the practical choice. We should point out there are three distinct 9-inch axle ends: the late big bearing (Torino) and the early big bearing both take a 3.150-inch od wheel bearing (the difference is in the bolt spacing for the backing plates), the small bearing ends take a 2.834 od bearing with yet a different backing plate bolt pattern. We chose a 4.11 ring-and-pinion as the wagon will be equipped with an overdrive automatic, tall rear tires, and will be towing a restored camp trailer from time to time. Strange differential assemblies are available with a variety of gear ratios.

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