Well I am giving this another shot tomorrow (flipped the backing plates on accident) and I was wondering about how the backing plates bolt to the axle tubes?

Do you put the T part of the bolt on the inside of the backing plate with the nuts facing the middle of the car or the other way around? It looks like a tight fit in there as well so how in the hell do you mount those easily??

 

the nuts go on from the outside, little tight in there with the parking brake shoes but doable..

 

Yeah I got one of mine on backwards the first time also! As for the T-bolts, they go the other way with the nuts outward. IMO this system kinda sucks, because the nuts are going to chew up that thin metal on the inside of the plates. I attached mine the way the stock ones were on there, with normal bolts and trashed the T-bolts. The problem with doing that is you don't have enough room for the nuts until you carefully grind some metal off the housing ends; I used a die grinder with a fiber wheel to do this. Only remove enough metal for the flat of the nut, not enough to allow it to spin. I say this because the metal is alread relatively thin in this area. That also serves to hold the nut while you torque the bolts from the other side. I hope this helps and wasn't too confusing.

 

jesus.. I am making this hard on myself .... I just tried it tonight before reading this (I can figure it out cough) and I did it the wrong way and then couldn't get the damn t-bolts back out without pulling the axles back out of the tube a bit... I must say I'm learning a lot but GD it is taking me a while.

Thanks for the replies guys... this is the only way this one is getting done at this point is with your help