Hi,

I want to swap the diff on my 74 120y. The one on my car leaks badly and makes noise when shfiting.

I have a donor (borg warner) and matching tailshaft, as the original is a hitachi.

The thing is the brake line has been removed from the BW, and the brakes and everything else on the car are in great condition, so i would like to keep as much as possible on the original car.

How hard is it to swap the whole brake assembly? It seems you have to remove the axle shafts with a slide hammer, which i dont have.

If you want to remove the axles just loosely attach a rim and the distance of the stud will give you a slide hammer action when you slam the rim hard against the nuts.

Ahh, ok thanks.

One other thing I would like to keep the handbrake cable assembly from the car, i.e. swap the cable onto the new diff.

I can't see how to remove/install the cable where it attachs to the diff at the lock plate. Is there a trick to this?

sometimes when there really stuck you may need to use an old seatbelt or chain attached to a wheelnut and swing at it with a big hammer or another axle etc. Unfortunatelly im not sure on the brakes might have to just try it, handbrake assy from borgwarner should just attatch to that adjusting mechanism

I do not believe that ANYTHING is interchangeable between the Warner rear axle assembly, & the Hitachi one, except perhaps the wheel nuts.

The rear wheel cylinders on the Warner rear end are a different bore size too, which necessitated a different master cylinder bore size & the front brake calipers were also sized differently to make it all a matched set.

Can anyone confirm?

That's a shame. So youre saying even if the backing plates would bolt on (which it appears they would) the brakes would not match?

I can confirm that the JDM manufactured and austalian manufactured brake master cylinders are the SAME bore size.... source:

Gregorys service manual for the 120Y

the B310 is larger...it hasa 20mm bore...

I think the handbrake cables swap over... not sure as I haven't done it...

I have had great reliability out of the BW68 in "The Defect" but I did notice it was making a very small "tink tink tink" noise going around the occasional corner... sounds like the spider gears are starting to go... oh well I could always weld it up (If I get it going again)

Ok thanks mawler, sounds like what I wanted to hear.

It looks very much like the handbrake cables will swap, everything looks identical. Looks like the hyrdaulic line will swap too.

One (possibly dumb) question; if I use a rim to remove the axle shaft as sidedraught suggests, should I be using a sacrificial rim, rather than one I will want to use as a wheel?

I dont think you will harm the rim,I normally use the one thats on there.

Its not a job for a mag though.