Chevy & GMC Vans

Looking to turn a hotrod into awd. Unfortunately the track width is only 55"the astro van is over 10" wider.

Is this something that is easily done? or rather costly due to custom cv?


looking to mate an ls1 with 4l80e- adapter - nv149

AWD hot rod-I love it! Ok lots to talk about here. There are some options for the front diff. There are aluminum or cast iron. The cast iron units are sought after by severe off-roaders as they stand up to shock loading due to oversized tires under slip/grip conditions. Some Sy/Ty owners are running high boost engines with stock aluminum diffs so it is possible to have hi hp and aluminum in the same sentence. The aluminum is by far the most readily available as it came in all of the AWD Astro/Safari vans, all Cyclones and Typhoons, all Olds Bravadas, and almost all 4x4 S-10 Blazers and pick ups. The cast iron was found in a specific combo of 4x4 manual transmission np233 transfer case pick up.
First gens up to 97 iirc used bolt on flanged style axles. Slip ins were used exclusively after that. I believe GM went with larger axle bearings in the slip in cases.
You will need custom axles. http://www.rcvperformance.com/?gclid=CP ... swodfFILfw these are nice and they will make you whatever you want. And lifetime warranty iirc.
All 7.2 ifs differentials are open style. There are two aftermarket LSD options if you want to go that way. Jeff at Engineered Performance http://www.engineered.net and MFactory http://store.ycwengineering.com/catalog ... -TRS-05SYC build clutch style or Torsen style carriers respectively for the 7.2.
So the toughest part may be fabbing the mounts for the diff. Everything else from center chuck to the hubs are available with the click of the mouse

Hope this helps

An interesting idea.

A local guy here has an 4WD rat rod. Although his is based on a Chevy LUV frame and front end, it really piqued my curiosity when I saw it. We actually talked for quite awhile and I was giving him info on the Astro/Safari AWD T-case because he was wanting AWD vs 4WD.

A couple of thoughts. You could maybe minimize the overall width by going to a wheel with a positive offset.

I'm not sure what the overall front axle width of the Astro/Safari is, so you could maybe tackle a couple of different ways. Custom outer axle shafts would be easiest (since someone else does the work), but shorting each side 5" is a lot and going to work the C/Vs harder if you have much suspension travel. It would certainly be better, if possible, to cut down the long side of the removeable axle tube and then use a cut down axle as well. This would require more custom fab work and I'm not sure you can pull 10" out this way. But it would sure be sweet to be able to use factory outer axle shafts if you ever needed to replace them down the road.

mdmead wrote:An interesting idea.

It would certainly be better, if possible, to cut down the long side of the removeable axle tube and then use a cut down axle as well. This would require more custom fab work and I'm not sure you can pull 10" out this way. But it would sure be sweet to be able to use factory outer axle shafts if you ever needed to replace them down the road.

Good point mdmead.