Alright, our rear end has the stock plastic cover, and it's cracked in like 4 places on the ears by the bolt heads. I'm guessing when the 3.73's were installed the guy over torqued the bolts and the plastic just couldn't handle it ?

So I'm looking at the Trick Flow cover,



See those brass/bronze colored studs ? I assume those are the support studs, what exactly are they and how do they work. I've installed rear diff covers, but never any performance one like the trick flow one, I know nothing about the studs, so please, educate me.

~Thanks a ton, I want to get this thing to the strip next month.

 

plastic?? no 8.8 i KNOW OF EVER CAME WITH A PLASTIC COVER?????.....anyway I have the tfs girdle on my 85 and the bronze stugs screw into the cover and press against the main caps on the diff carrier.....they are torqued to 10 ft lbs, = not very tight as to not distort caps and cause premature wear the nuts in the pic are the jam/ lock nuts to hold te studs in place from backing off/out once set

 

Trick Flow and the TA Rear diff cover are basically the same.
The brass/bronze studs are the load bolts and what they do is place a slight pre-load on the caps.
This is from TA when I did the rear diff cover on my car.

 

Hmm, I think I just won't use the support studs for now.

And yes mjr, it's a plastic cover, I think thats one of the dumbest things they ever thought of doing when they made the rear end.

 

ive only seen the plastic covers on rangers

 

Gonna say, my ranger has one. Only good part about it is it has a magnet molded right in it.

 

why wont you use the supports?

 

I've never heard of a plastic cover on a 7.5" or an 8.8" off of a Mustang. I'm thinking that's not stock.

 

That rear end is brand spanking new, the paint you see is the factory paint.

I guess I'm worried about my torque wrench being off and putting too much pressure and the caps and screwing up the caps.

And how do you tighten them ? In the pic it looks like it's just threaded. Or do you torque the jam nuts ?

 

I just did my finger tight and tightened down the jam nut. The plastic cover a lot of taxi cabs have them that come in my work.