I've been working on swapping my 1971 1800E rear axle into my Amazon Wagon. A wagon swap is not nearly as nightmarish as I was led to believe and I've already dropped and swapped the parts. They bolt up well and the only issues (aside from the panhard rod mounting is that the 71E's axle has a single bolt hole to secure it to the torque rods/lower trailing arms while th Amazon Wagon has two holes.
Two holes forces the differential into a very specific angle and sadly when bolted up to the forward or rear bolt holes, the 71E's differential is either angled up a but too much or way too far down. (A bit high is closer to where it should be.
So, I'm planning on getting the lower brackets welded and drilled to match the Amazon's differential, but it occurs to me that the 71E was held to the car in precisely the same fashion yet only a single pivot bolt was used. So what kept the differential properly aligned on the 1800E?? It should have been able to pivot just as much as it presently does on my setup. Is this just a case of the two pivot points (torque arms and trailing arms) being in precisely the correct arrangement relative to each other?
Interestingly, I discovered that the panhard rods are the exact same length, although the Amazon's panhard is wider at the bracket than the 1800.
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