Poor boy widened 9inch housing idea.

[J.Karrar]

Wanted to hear some thoughts on widening a ford 9inch, kinda serious kinda just a thought exercise. I have a handful of truck housings laying around to try this with so id be out nothing but time if it didn't work.
My thought was take housing "A" and cut it somewhere on the tubes. Take housing "B" and do the same thing only moving the cuts inboard 2" to 3". Taking the tubes from housing "B" and welding them onto housing "A". Of course using a alignment bar through the carrier with machined "pucks?" where the axle bearings would be to keep it all straight. Then continuing on with the standard back truss.
I don't see any reason it wouldn't work, and I have hour lunches with all the freedom to work on personal projects.
Reason for all this is i didn't consider the rear axle width when I built my super sick prerunner bro 4.5 over beams

 

[84Prerunner]

It’s possible, definitely be frowned on lol.
If you have all those tools, why not cut the tubes off, machine some nice .250wall new tubes to slip inside, weld it all up with fresh bearing ends.

 

[J.Karrar]

It’s possible, definitely be frowned on lol.
If you have all those tools, why not cut the tubes off, machine some nice .250wall new tubes to slip inside, weld it all up with fresh bearing ends.

mostly just thinking in terms of stuff i have= no money spent. but I didn't think about just doing new tubes/ends. your saying cut the housing so there's say 4" of factory tube at ".???" thickness, machine the new .250 tubes to slip inside of the factory tubes? am I understanding that right? I'm not sure how much tube runs into the center of the housing, but id imagine there's enough to cut the tubes right where it meets the diff housing.

 

[84Prerunner]

mostly just thinking in terms of stuff i have= no money spent. but I didn't think about just doing new tubes/ends. your saying cut the housing so there's say 4" of factory tube at ".???" thickness, machine the new .250 tubes to slip inside of the factory tubes? am I understanding that right? I'm not sure how much tube runs into the center of the housing, but id imagine there's enough to cut the tubes right where it meets the diff housing.

Yep you pretty much got what I’m saying right. Different housings have different tube sizes factory so you’d have to cut it, mic it and figure what size and wall thickness would work best for the new tubes

 

[85Yota]

I did this on a GM 14 bolt full floated. The aftermarket shafts are cut to fit and longer. So I got 2 tubes from another rear axle, then figure out the width we could make it work and then cut axle and new tubes to length, I have a lineup bar and pucks so was able to get those in and everything was perfectly straight. Then no sleeve or anything, beveled the 1/4" thick tube and di a couple passes with the Tig welder. Obviously a truss would make it work better but leafs and not extreme off-roading no problems in the 18 months since done.