Ford Performance Ring And Pinion Installation Kit Basic 8.8" Mustang 1985-2014

Over the years, one of the most popular installations in a Mustang is to change out the rear gears. By going to a numerically higher rear gear, every time the drive shaft turns, the wheels are going to spin faster. It's going to make the car accelerate quicker. Today we're going to show you the basics on how to install rear gears on any 8.8 solid-axle Mustang.

There’s going to be a couple of pieces necessary for the installation. We're going to start with the ring and pinion itself. We're going with Ford Racing's 410 ring and pinion for our application. It includes a ring and assembly along with a pinion nut and a crush collar. You'll also want to pick up a 8.8" rear installation kit before you start your installation itself. This kit here is our supreme kit. It gives you all the bearings, shims, bolts, even the marking compound necessary for installation.

In addition to what you see here, you'll also need three quarts of gear oil along with friction modifier depending on what carrier you're using. We're not going to do a step-by-step with our normal tools with this installation. This is not a good first-timer install. We're going to show you the basics of how to do it and the special tools required. You can make up your mind if you want to try it yourself or pay a professional.

A lot of your late model Mustangs, the cover itself is actually going to tell you what gear ratio is in it. The case of this car has actually been changed before to a set up for a 30. The car used to be raced heavily, but since this owner doesn't race it as much, he's going to go a little bit lower and go back to a set of 4:10s, so that's what we're installing today. We'll also remove the wheels and tires. I would start with the cover. That way we can start draining the oil and then take your wheels and tires off.

Once you remove them all, put the top center one in a little bit, a couple of turns so the carrier doesn't come off, and we can pry it off.

Now that we have the wheels off, the rear is still dripping, we'll remove everything else that's going to be in the way for our installation. You're going to have to move the pan hard bar, sway bar, and remove the caliper brackets for our brake calipers so we can remove the rotors and be able to remove the axles.

Before you remove the bearing caps on each side, you'll want to mark them because you want to be sure they go back in the same spot they were moved. You can use a marker or paint, but a lot of times when you clean up stuff, that comes off. We'll make a small mark with a punch.

Now I'll do the same thing on our drive shaft. Once you've marked them, you can remove the drive shaft. You want to make sure you have the correct 12.12 millimeter socket to remove it.

What we're going to do now is tie the drive shaft up and out of the way. If you remove it, fluids will come out of the transmission. By putting it out of the way, you don't have to drain the tranny.

On our normal 8.8, you'll have a bolt on the side over here. You'll remove that and remove the cross pin and then remove your axles. The case in this car has a Detroit True Track in it, and it's a little bit different. With the snap ring, pull the plate out.

Before you can remove the axles, you'll want to remove the ABS sensors. These are plastic, so you'll want to be real careful when removing, especially in an older car. They can break when they come out.

I want to push the axles in so you can see the c-clips, and then we're going to remove them with a magnet. Once the c-clips are removed, now you're going to remove the axles. Make sure you grab a rag, and, as you're pulling the axle out, you'll want to hold it up so it doesn't drag the flange against the seals because it can damage them. Now you can remove the carrier end caps.

Once you remove the carrier, you'll want to grab the shims. We're going to measure them out to know what width we had on each side. You need a mic for this. Once the carrier is out, we can move on now to remove the pinion nut. To remove the pinion itself, there is a puller you can use to do it, but sometimes you get lucky and just tap it with a hammer and it will come out. Once the pinion is out, you're going to remove the pinion seal, and the pinion barrel will come out with it. The only part here you're going to want to reuse, it's going to be this medal shim. Then you're going to want to grab the large punch so you can work out the bearing races.

Once everything is apart, grab some Brake Clean and just clean it all up. You want to make sure you scrape any remaining gasket material off here. Now we're going to do a quick cleaning with the wheel to make sure we have a good surface for our new gasket.

We're going to start the installation of our new gears by installing the bearing races. This is another place where you're actually going to need a specialty tool for the installation. A bearing race kit like this can be purchased from some auto parts stores for as little as $30. You can also possibly rent one.

We're going to start by putting the race up into place. Get it seated as flat as possible. It will kind of feel right when it goes into place and use the tool to hammer it in.

The pinion bearing should slide down on the new pinion. We've found that Ford racing gears with the coating they use, if it doesn't go on smoothly. Cleaning the coating off of this area here will make the install much easier. Now we're good to go there.

Now we've moved over to the press so we can remove the pinion bearing off the pinion so we can get to the shim. It's another special tool. You will need a press to do this job.

Now you're going to remove the shim off the old pinion. It's like before. We're going to clean this off and mic it. I'll put some Anti-Seize on the bottom of this so we can install the new bearing. With the original shim in place, we'll go back over to our press.

Now that our pinion bearing is pressed on, we can install the pinion back in our housing. Before installing the pinion, I put a little grease in the bearings. We're ready to install.

With the bearing in place with the shim behind it and the seal, and hammer it into place.

Now we're going to prep the flange by first putting some silicone in the splines and then slide the crush sleeve over the pinion, and we're ready to install. We'll put the pinion through the housing, put the flange up into place and start tightening it up.

You'll want to hold on to the flange and start tightening the nut down so that we can get rid of the slack in the pinion.

Once you have the pinion nut tight and there's no play at all, I'm going to grab a torque wrench and measure it. We want it to be around 25. There we go. 25. Right where we want it.

We'll start the carrier prep by removing the old ring. Before we install the new ring, grab one of your old bolts. Just make sure it threads cleanly into all the holes before you install the new bolts, which have the thread lock already on them.

Even though it's a new ring, you want to go around the outside edge with a file just to make sure there's no burrs on the section here.

Now you're going to remove the carrier bearings. When you're working with a stock or a Ford housing, there'll be an actual little indent here that will allow you to use a puller to get underneath the bearing and pull it off. With a Detroit, it's not actually possible, so what we're going to do is cut the bearing off. First we'll remove the outside ring and we'll cut the inner off. Once you have both the original bearings off, now we can press on the new bearings. Get that seated in place.

Now I can put the new ring on. Usually it will slide right over it. If not, you're just going to tap it on. You won't need a press for this. Be careful not to over-tighten these. We'll have to torque them down properly. What you want to do is just use a pry bar to hold it in place while you torque it.

What we're going to do now is assemble new shims for our carrier before we install it. You could reuse the old ones, but we're going to choose to use new ones here. What I'm going to do is put it together, start measuring it out, go up and measure into the originals. That's a good place to get you started. We're 235. We need to be closer to 257. There we go. That will be right for our left-hand side. Now I'll make one for the right-hand side.

With the races on the carrier bearings, you're ready to reinstall your carrier. It's good to get someone to give you a hand here. That way one person can hold the shims in place. The other person can put the carrier up into the rear.

You may want to grab your dial indicator and check your backlash. Turn the pinion until you get to 0, and you want to check the play. You want it between 9 and 11,000. These are going to differ on this. We found that keeping it in that range is the best for it. Right at about 12, so we're off just a hair. With that, you do want to go back and shim it properly because being there could make the gears noisy.

Because the number was higher than we what wanted, we took a 3,000 shim from the right side and moved it to the left. If the number is too low, you'll do the opposite. You'll take one from the left side, move it to the right, and then re-measure. There we go, right at 10, ready to put it back together. Before reassembling, you'll want to remove the fill plug here just to make sure you can get it out.

Now I want to reinstall the end cap, making sure you line them up in the same place you removed them from. Once the caps are tightened down, we're going to double check our backlash one more time. Perfect, right at 10.

Then we're going to use the supplied marking compound to check the pattern. If you have someone to help you, but a little pressure on it with a pry bar, and you're going to want to turn it. Here you can see our pattern. Ideally you're going to have it a little further down, but we do have a nice, good pattern across the teeth. It should be good and we're ready to put it back together.

Once the carrier is assembled, we can reassemble everything we took apart. We'll start by putting the axles back in. Reinstall the c-clips, and reinstall the spacer. Install the ABS sensors. Now rotors and calipers.

The kit includes a gasket. We suggest using ultra-grade silicone. It gives you a much better seal versus what the factory is going to use. We'll put the cover back up into place.

Now we're going to fill it up. We're using Royal Purple 75-140 synthetic so it doesn't require any additional additives to be installed. Now we can bolt the drive shaft back to the pinion, reinstall our wheels and tires, and our installation's finished.

Our test drive went great, and our gears are nice and quiet. As long as you get your backlash set properly and you have a good pattern, you shouldn't have any noise with your installation.

Keep in mind when you're finished, you do have to correct your speedometer. If you have a pre-'99, you can do that with a speedometer gear. Anything newer will require a tuner. Like we said before, this install is not for everybody. It does require some special tools. If you decide to try it, make sure you have the right tools in advance and give yourself the better part of a day for your first installation. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel for more installation videos.