Hello, im new to the club and building a 52 Ford F1.
I want to put a 95 or newer 8.8 rear end in the truck, and was wondering will it fit with out cutting bed or narrowing?
Or can i just move spring perches and install?

 

As I recall the 8.8 Explorer rear ends that I have used are 59.75 inches wide, flange-to-flange.
Whether this will work for your truck depends a lot on your wheels.

 

I went with a 2000 Explorer rear from a breakers yard and a Welder series triangulated 4 link. Came out well -

 

Hey Kosta,
We put a 2001 Explorer 8.8 in our 1950 F1. It fit fine and no need to cut the bed or narrow anything but you do have to move the spring perches. As Charlie said - choice of wheels/tires will matter if you go extreme. We went with some torque thrust wheels with 9 inch wide tires - Had to use 1 inch Spacers to get them to line up in the fender and look right but that was ok with us. Keep in mind the 8.8 axle uses a different wheel stud size so it will not match up with the stock wheels. We changed out our front end as well so all 4 wheels match up with the car wheel pattern.

We went with the 8.8 Explorer with 3.73 gearing, locking diff, with disc brakes. Normally they have a tag on them so you can see what you are getting.
Not all 8.8's are the same. We used the ebrake set up that came with our's & we chunked the strange third shock thing that was on top of the diff.

Good luck over there in Illinois.

Ben in Austin
1950 F1

 

As the others have said, it will depend on wheel choice. Mine is lowered pretty far and when I had stock explorer wheels on it, the tires rubbed the bed side. I ran spacers when I was driving with those wheels. The brack calipers also interfered with the bed sides.

 

My F1 is a 48 and I'm running the 59" 8.8 from an explorer. My truck is 4" lower than stock using a TCI leaf spring kit. The inside of the tires just barely cleared the bed sides, but they would have rubbed in use. I spaced the wheels out 1" on both sides with aluminum spacers from a 4x4 vendor. I forget the name of the vendor but they specialized in wheel adapters and spacers. No rubbing problems with 16x7 wheels and 235/65r16 tires. I could have easily gone wider, probably up to a 265 section width, but I was aiming at a particular tire height for gearing. As Charlie said above, you wheels will make a difference. I had five chrome smoothies custom made to a specific back space and they got them wrong. Too much back space. Oh well.
Rusty.

 

I run 70-81 camaro or 68-72 chevelle rears, about 61" WMS to WMS and work great.

 

What did you have to cut/weld/move to get the 70-81 10 bolt to fit?

 

I am doing that right now and it has taken a bit of time to do all the things you don't take into account. I have wheel spacers for now although may get custom wheels in future. I have gone with axle over spring which left very little room for shocks and has meant fabricating a new crossmember for them. The spring perch positions had to be changed as well but likely the angle would have needed changed anyway.

 

I used a 1975 Chevelle 8.5 inch 10-bolt in my 49. The Chevelle is coil sprung so you have to remove all the old coil spring brackets and weld on a pair of spring pads but it fits fine. It is 61 inches wide.

 

so by the numbers. The bed is about 49 inches wide between the wheel wells. and you have about 11 inches clear between the bed and the inside of the fender. That means the rear axle needs to be 60 inches flange face to flange face to be centered in the wheel well. But now comes the tricky part. Getting the right wheels. Not a problem if you have the right wheels and can measure them but to buy new wheels you need to know the right dimensional specifications. Wheel specs include the rim width and offset and setback dimensions, pilot hole size and of course the number of lug bolts and pattern size, and this can be confusing. Most guys talk about backspacing because it's less confusing than the offset dimension because offset is either positive of negative and it's hard to remember which is which. I'm sure there have been many situations where someone ordered wheels with a +1" offset and should have gotten neg 1" offset. And you have to be careful with rim width to be sure if it is overall width or rim width.

So back tot he OPs original question. The 8.8 I put in my '54 has a flange to flange width of 59 inches. I have 235/65r17 tires on 8" wide wheels with zero offset (Blackrock 941 Dune wheels) and I need 1/4" spacers to prevent rubbing on the inside. But that's ok because when it's all said and done and you're bolting that new set of wheels and tires on your truck it's better to need to add a spacer than it is to be too wide.

 

Same as any other rear install. Remove the original axle brackets and mounts, set the rear on the leafs with new axle perches or originals if you can save them. Center the rear side to side, set the pinion angle with the truck at ride height with the suspension loaded, weld in the axle pads. On the chevelle rear I cut off the upper control arm mounts for bed floor clearance.