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Old 05-19-2018, 04:12 PM   #69
John V
No more BMWs
 
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Carmudgeonly Ride: Ram, MS3, CX-5, RX-8
Location: Glenwood, MD
Posts: 14,753
The kit uses the outer CV joints and stubs from a 6-speed RX-8. They're very beefy and hold up to a lot of abuse. Disassembly is largely the same as the Ford axles in the beginning. Remove the boot, clean off the grease.



The difference is the RX-8 outer CV joint is held in place with a blind circlip. To get the outer CV off, you need to either pull it out or strike it off. I put the axle in my vise, put a block of wood on the CV joint and smacked it with my 10lb mini-sledge. It came off no problem.



The RX-8 CV joint looks a bit different than the Ford, and is fairly common for Japanese and European cars.



Here's that little bugger of a circlip, now installed on the new Ronin axles.



Ready to install on the new axle shafts. It's a little fiddly to get them on, because that circlip needs to be closed up with a pliers enough to allow the CV splines to engage. Once it clears the chamfer, it slides in with a little help from a deadblow.



After greasing everything up, the new boots can slide on and the retaining rings can be clamped into place. It's important to try to get the excess air out of these before clamping them down. Here the retaining clips are in place but not crimped.



I actually bought the correct tool to clamp these, back when I was working on Matt's car. It makes this job a snap.





And that's where I'm going to leave it for now. The Ford CV shells use a weird rubber adapter that the boot clamps around. New ones didn't come with the boot kit that the Ronin guys sent, and the ones from the Explorer were a little dry rotted so I'm going to order new ones before wrapping up the axles.

I designed the bushings I need to make and ordered materials, so the next thing will be installing the bushings. Then I can get the diff mounted in the subframe using the rear mounts, and prepare to weld in the front cradle. In our next installment...
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