Dana Dilemma

After owning Mopars since 1971, I just
bought a 1967 Coronet R/T, 440, 4-speed.
I took the axles out to replace the leaky
seals and was surprised to see one axle
is longer than the other. I have never seen
that before, please help me understand
what this is about, I know you know.

All our muscle-era Mopars have the
engine (and transmission) offset 1.5˝ to the
passenger side. This was done to allow
room for the steering box on the driver
(L.) side and allow for same-length axle
shafts. If you examine a typical Chrysler
rear axle, the pinion (and yoke) are offset
by this same ~1.5˝ dimension – necessary
because of the thickness of the ring gear
and the diameter of the pinion gear head.
Of course, the rear axle assembly could
be engineered to have the pinion deadcenter
in the car, but this would call for
having the different length shafts left/right.
Fitting a much larger carrier/diff assembly
engineered to fit a car with the nearlyunalterable
1.5˝ powertrain / floor pan tunnel
offset (Dana 60) would do so as well.
Light bulb illuminating….