10 bolt housing brace???
 

Has anyone here ever used anything like this. The rear is for sale by a local rcser and the brace is the only thing I'm not sure of. Supposedly it keeps the tubes from moving forward. BTW its a 8.5 10 bolt with 33 spline strange axles and spool, 4.56, MW 1350 yoke, and Ford ends. Rear is supposed to have less than 40 passes and has been in the 8's, asking price is 750... What do you guys think.. I did a search and there is plenty of reading on 8.5's but no brace. The closest was Langer saying something about finding a way to keep the tubes from moving forward...Thanks...

as long as it's straight when they welded the brace on it won't hurt anything, why are they selling it? seems like it would keep the axles from being able to rotate or bend very easily, i have mostly seen and had welded the tubes to the housing, and used a cover girdle. never seen a brace like that though!

LPW makes a rear diff girdle that incorporates a housing brace into the girdle design.

They call it the "ultimate support cover" kit with axle braces.

www.lpwracing.com

Or see pic below from that website.

So the idea itself is nothing new,maybe just the method those fellas used to execute the same baisc goal.

Seeing as it has the ford housing ends as well,it's almost certain the work should have been done with the rear on a jig,thus the housing should have been straight after the welding was done to the housing,so that might ease some of my concerns.

Also fairly common is removing the stock tubes and using thicker wall Chro-Mo tubes.

Really the possibillities are only limited by a fellas budget and imagination,and to a lesser degree his abillity to justify both of those for that given rear end choice.

HTH.

Anyway you can triangulate the tubes, will only help it last longer.

I think the problem running at that level with that particular setup is breaking gear sets.

been running a 8.5 10 bolt 4:56/4:88 in a 70 camaro (3200 pounds running 10:20/10:10's 's At 135 ) with the cover and braces for years , they keep the tubes from bending forward and help push the gear caps back in place from the gear trying to push out the back , we ran it without the braces and the tires had a funky pattern on them and slowed down by .15, so they work and we think this is why the axle and gears lasted as long as they do 4 seasons on the 4:88's then we broke the teeth off because someone reused the crush spacer when they inspected the gears ..