Thunder Kiss

Will a Dana 44 out of a manual 1988 coupe bolt straight into my auto 1986 coupe?
I know the wheel offsets are different, that's why I ask.
Will my '86 half shafts work without modification?
How about my driveshaft?

Pete K

The rear is a direct bolt in. Simply swap out the center section and batwing, driveshaft and c-beam. The bolt holes that go though the lower camber bracket mount will need to be drilled slightly larger and you will need the 4 88 bolts and nuts.

aboatguy

Skidownit wrote a great article on the swap https://www.corvetteforum.com/techti...=218&TopicID=2

Corvette Kid

Don't you mean his camber brackets themselves must be drilled? If he were swapping an early rear into a later car then yes, the mounting holes in the housing itself would have to be enlarged. In his case, the reverse is true. The holes in his camber brackets must be enlarged to the later bolt and hole size.
Oh, and you'll need to put your A4 transmission yoke on the D44 driveshaft. The difference in early and late track widths comes from the early/late rear knuckle and wheel bearing assemblies. The halfshafts are the same for all years. Some folks have used the A4 driveshaft as is and report no problems. This may be true as there's for all practical purposes no for and aft movement of the driveshaft, as there would be in a more conventional rear drive car. But the D44 shaft is about an inch shorter so I would prefer to use it (and did) or recommend having your's shortened an inch just to be correct. Shortening and rebalancing a driveshaft is not really very expensive.

Thunder Kiss

Thank you all for the quality replies.