WHAT’S UP IN THE FORUMS: F-Body 10-Bolt Swap
Forum member fortifies his rear with the ol’ F-Body 10-Bolt swap.
Owners of 4th gen F-Body cars face the same conundrum a lot of guys do. You can only put so much power through a stock rear end before things get ugly. The obvious answer, of course, is to swap out the weak rear end with a bigger, stronger unit. And that’s exactly what speedfreaksteve set out to do in his fourth gen Camaro – complete an F-Body 10-Bolt swap.
Moving up to the 8.5″ 10-bolt gives you a ton of options and it can be fortified to handle gobs of power. Plus, you get to keep your GM car all-GM. No Ford or Mopar parts to taint the nameplate. But after teasing everyone with his plans, Soul Crusher disappeared. After rumors floated around that he simply got drunk and forgot (or ditched) his plans, the OP reemerged with the goods.
And according to Soul Crusher, things went rather swimmingly.
“It’s held up well since we put it in in the summer. Took it to the track twice. No issues. Next summer it’s slicks and spray. Its a little wider than the factory rear but it fits fine. Only problem is the 6 bolt hubs… (it’s what we had laying around)”
“We had to build our own torq arm too.”
Then, finally, the actual owner of the car, speedfreaksteve, chimes in.
“This is actually my car, I can try and get some shots of it installed this weekend. It wasn’t that bad labour wise, we actually put more effort into taking the 8.5 out of the truck in the scrap yard. As far as I recall we spent 3 nights working on it to get it ready to go under the car… so like 6 hours of work and 6 hours of drinking beer”
“We simply took the control arm brackets and spring perches off the original rear, modified them to fit the larger diameter axle tube, welded them in place, and put it back in. We were able to use the stock components except the torque arm.”
While others debate the merits of this rear end vs. that rear end, AnotherWs6 points out the reasoning behind such a swap.
“I’m not gonna comment on the other two recent poster’s novels other than to say that this is a thread about getting an 8.5 in an F-body.
To speedtigger, I like what you’ve said. You didn’t have problem until our heavy car hit 9’s. Which sounds about right. And means this…. and 8.5 is significantly stronger than a 7.5 and is just fine for probably 90% of people in general. A 7.5 is a junk rear end. A 8.5 is a decent one with limitations. There hundreds of thousands of these things behind small and big block performance cars all over the country. Trucks too obviously. Ever since I bought my current Transam I’ve been curious about putting an 8.5 in it. I’m never going to run 10’s even. I rarely go the track. It seems like an economical – power and weight and parasitic power loss – choice.
Let’s get back on topic. The OP did a good job of getting a stronger rear end in his car on the cheap. It’s interesting and fun. 6 lug, additional width, obviously not ideal. He knows that. Just doing it because he/they thought about and thought they could. And did. Probably while having fun.”
Sadly, we never got to see any more photos of the finished product (yet). For some reason, the OP lives in Canada and has to deal with that cold, white, powdery stuff. So hopefully once things thaw out, we’ll get some more details and/or photos of the work.
