 1 Axle Housing locked in bench vise. The axle housing is heavy, wear steel toe boots.
|  2 Brake Backing Plate is stripped. You can see the 5 large .500" dia rivets you will remove. Cut each head off flush with a angle grinder and a cut off wheel. Wear SAFETY GLASSES, Gloves and HEARING PROTECTION for all the following evolutions !!
|  3 Rivet heads cut off and then ground smooth with a flap disk in your angle grinder. I have circled the rivets. You can easily see the outline of each rivet
|
 4 Center Punch the exact center of each rivet
|  5 Make your first hole with a 1/8": drill, .500" deep, then follow with a 1/4", 5/16" and finally a 3/8" bits. Always drill the hole to the bottom of the first pilot hole
|  6 All rivets are now drilled .500" deep with a 3/8" bit
|
 7 If you dont have your safety equipment on, do it now ! Safety Glasses, Gloves, Hearing Protection.
Now take a 3/8" flat nose punch and lock it in a pair of large vice grips. Insert the punch in the first hole and drive the punch with a hand sledge. The first blow will have a ring sound, the following couple blows will have a muffled thud sound as the rivet moves out.
|  8 15 minutes, start to backing plate off
|  9 No damage whatsoever to the axle housing flange
|
 10 Totally protect the spindle with rags and a soda bottle taped in position before you Media Blast the Housing. I also bolt a spare cover plate on the axle housing opening to keep media out of the tube.
|  11 Prior to Paint, Clean, Clean, Clean the inside of the Axle Housing. Clean it as you would clean a firearm barrel. Swabs, brush, get her clean. In this picture, I have primed the housing with PPG, MP-170 Epoxy Primer. After curing for 3 hours, I top coat it
|  12 Housing is now top coated with PPG, MOA Chassis Black. Total time to strip, blast, prime and paint was 4.5 hours.
|