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Magna-v's Gforce 9" install

5K views 19 replies 10 participants last post by  Rakenjevnk 
#1 ·
I did this entire thing (besides the exhaust) in my garage at home (not very big) with a couple buddies in about a day and a
half. It really was a lot easier than i expected. The fit and finish of the Gforce kit is of very very high quality and is entirely what makes the process go so smooth. Lets get down to the dirty!

Step 1: Break this........j/k........ but seriously


Buy this


Get your car on some jackstands (in a safe sturdy spot as far back as possible without hindering rear cradle) and get the wheels off. Also at this time, break the axle nuts loose (the big nut in the middle of the rotor) with your 34mm socket, remove the nut and thread it back on slightly and whack them a couple times with a BFH for ease of removal later. you can see in this pic how i have the nut threaded on the axle backwards.


Remove your exhaust at the collectors first.

Unbolt rear shocks from the lower control arm mount and put the bolts back in the shock where they came from so they don't get mixed up with all the other large grey bolts you will be dealing with.

Next go to the center of the car under the drivers side and find the parking brake cable union, kinda hard to miss. This is where your buddies will come in handy, have them gently pry up on the parking brake levers on the back side of each rotor to give you enough slack in the cable to push them together and separate them. It will look like this when you get it apart. (don't mind my shotty wideband wire routing)


Next there is two hard lines for the brakes both located in the same spot in the passenger side wheel well attached to a bracket that is held on with two 10mm nuts. Get a flare nut wrench for these, you wouldn't want to round em off, disconnect both of those.

and again, put the nuts back on the studs.

Next is the wheel speed sensor plugs, pretty straight forward just unplug them un pull the clips that retain them to the cradle and move them out of the way.


Now you should be ready to get your jack underneath the diff and loosen the 4 cradle bolts. I don't have any pictures of these but you really cant miss them, two in the from and two in the back. Remove them and lower the cradle with your buddies on each side so your already broken diff doesn't go crashing into the floor. should look something like this:



Once you have it halfway down, remove the rubber driveshaft/trans coupler thingy from the trans with the driveshaft attached, remove the two bolts holding the two piece portion and carrier bearing thingy and the whole unit should be ready to remove.

Then drag it out like this:

you can see the parking brake cable here and in this shot below

(my buddy spencer (audi tech)) illustrating the parking brake cable lol

The whole show:

Next get rid of the old diff and axles. You can do this a number of ways, i unbolted the upper and lower control arms just to get the axles out and once i got them out i bolted them right back on so i didn't damage any ball joints having the control arms flopping all over the place. Once you've gotten the axles out, remove the three bolts holding the actual diff to the cradle.

you can do this differently than i did, but at this point i assembled the 9" center and housing so that i could start mocking everything up and figure out where i was going to have to cut the cradle to clearance for the stub shafts and axles. The only tip i have is that when you are putting the studs in, use some locktight on the case side of the studs and make sure they all bottom out into the case so if you have to double nut them to do that then so be it!

Here is the sticky part, im not going to tell you where to cut or how much to take out. This is completely subjective to your cradle, My cradle required less material taken out than the pictures i saw of forces install. this is what was required of my cradle but like i said, don't go cutting up your cradle based on my pics and come back on here with everything rubbing grinding on your cradle. If you do take it to a fab shop make sure you bring EVERYTHING with you because they will need it to test fit everything and check clearances when they are done.

 
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#2 · (Edited)
Make sure you cut what you need plus the thickness of the material your adding to box it in.

Final fit:



next is to put in the outer stub shafts, no explanation needed, just clean out the splines in the hub first and get the bug gold nut on.


six alan bolts on each end makes for a lot of wrenching but it you have air tools just run them up and final torque them by HAND!:yup:

At this point if you have any of the control arms unbolted, bolt them back up nag get everything ready to go back on the car. THIS MEANS CHECK CLEARANCES!!!:D:D:D i cant stress that enough. Trust me, all of this stuff is heavy and tedious to pull in and out of the cradle but very worth it if you don't want to do it twice.

Ready to go back up:halo:


Right before putting it back up i would suggest filling it up with 3qts of fluid or until it seeps out of the fill hole. I called strange to find out what type of fluid and if it need any kind of additive for the detroit in there and they said the type of fluid you use depends on the type of seals used in axles and housing, thats a whole other writeup in itself but the type of seals used in this kit are synthetic and petroleum based gear oils, so really any type of a decent brand of 75w90 should be fine according to strange engineering.

Pretty much go in reverse order of disassembly until you get to the driveline and exhaust. Starting with the driveline, take the solid coupler supplied by Gforce and bolt it to the trans output shaft with the supplied bolts, LOCKTITE!!!!! here. Next bolt up the steel/black portion of the driveshaft to the trans coupler. use the two original carrier bearing bolts that came off the car to bolt up the new carrier bearing. Get the next portion (aluminum) of the driveshaft and slip it in to the carrier bearing, IMPORTANT: the driveshaft is balanced and when i got mine it was marked with a red paint pen for where to "clock" it, pretty obvious but important to remember or you will have a vibrating ride lol.

Bleed the brakes good!!, all of them!!

Exhaust: Yours wont fit with this big a## diff........ take it to a shop, if its a competent shop it shouldn't be much of a problem but it will be a loud ride to get there:lildevil::lildevil::lildevil:

after that just break it in rice and easy for 500 miles,


remember, 30mins driving, 30 mins cooling for the first couple trips on the freeway.

check for leaks and enjoy!!!:yup:

Let me know if i missed anything.

these are the friends of mine who helped me, Brian(right) spencer(left) wouldn't have went so smooth without them!!!
 
#7 ·
Awesome job man! Looks beefy! Did you paint your cradle, or just clean it up after you were done?

You don't have permission to use my broken diff pic though.....hee hee j/k!

As far as the driveshaft goes, what was marked? The driveshaft and coupler? No vibes I take it?

I'm ordering mine in 3...2...1.....
 
#11 ·
And more to say the least. i did a donut for the first time in this car without worry, (never did one with the stocker) and it was solid as a rock. and yes this should make a local shop rethink their pricing. literally a competent shop could start in the morning and have the car test driven and delivered back to you by days end if they don't milk their time or "sandbag" you. if this came into my old work, i think i would charge around 800-1000 depending on what tools we had at our disposal such as a plasma cutter and such.
 
#14 ·
Chris, it might be beneficial for those contemplating this to better quantify the cradle mod with dimensions of the cutouts and material used to box cutouts. Just sayin'. I know I'd be more apt to take the plunge knowing this up front.
 
#15 ·
It's so easy to just test fit the diff and mark your cuts that it would be unnecessary for gforce to give measurements. Im not fooling anybody if I said I wasn't worried about the fab portion of the install but once you get in there and do it you would think " oh... I didn't even need those measurements". also the areas needed to be cut are just oddly shaped and you would need 3 dimensional measurements that most likely wouldn't be understood by anybody anyways, I know I wouldn't lol!!. If this is the deciding factor between you and piece of mind for your rear diff of your beloved car than just stop and order this sweet kit lol. That is if you have the spare duckets in your wallet, I know it took me a good amount of time!!
 
#18 ·
Yup he was there! he really helped me out by bringing most of the tools we used and an air compressor which came in clutch. And yeah anytime were both free for sure. she's a pretty nasty girls now that it can handle the maggie. there's a couple disappointed M3 owners in the lacy olympia area now, i got most of em bent over so far LOL
 
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