Slight rambling post as I'm bored on work calls and chomping at the bit to start cutting and wrenching on this thing. The TLDR: wheeling was awesome this year, however I need to understand F some stuff on the front end and this is my plan.
So I have wheeled the more in 3yrs than I have in almost all the years combined up to this point, truck has worked out awesome. The issue is I made some major rookie mistakes when I did the solid axle swap on this thing in 2016. For those of you who haven't wheeled with me and hear this breakdown in person, here it goes. When I chopped (literally) the front end off one evening I did the smart thing and marked off on the fender the center line of the axle when it wad IFS. Now I did a dumb thing which is 6months later, landed the solid axle right in that same spot. So I have right around 2" of uptravel before the tie rod hits the oil pan, and it rides on the air bumps. So that means it rides like shit on the street and anything above a walking pace on the trail also sucks. So I need to fix that, I also went with a big ass Ford box to avoid having hydro assist, well it's like 80% of hydro assist offroad, added bonus it over heats easily as it's like 1" from the manifold so it's gets heat soaked really bad. So the plan is:
Push the front axle forward to get uptravel
Notch the frame on the pax side
IFS box and hydro assist
Bunch of bling shit from radial dynamics
Re do my air bump situation
Fifth stud mod
Fix anything that I find that is broken.
Now normally I LOATHE fabricating, it's a necessary evil of the hobby for me, but I'm a actually excited to un F some stuff that needs to be un F'd. My wife doesn't wheel me because she has a bad back and the truck rides pretty bad, so that means I usually have someone riding shotty annoying me, or even worse making me try dumb stuff, instead of watching her bewbers bounce around. Also I'm getting older and the ride is annoying me. I'm also excited as I get to see how my hack fab has held up and pull the front axle apart to see how my combo of new RCVs, a used bobby long inner shaft, and a used trail gear chromo inner shaft is holding up. Now you may ask "slander why not link it??" Well because I don't want to and I'm cheap. I need a cage on this thing BAD and the truck as is gets.me into dumb enough situations on leafs, links will only make that worse. So this then cage. Onto some pics:
I have no idea why I did this with the rear shackle hangar, I plan of flipping that around 180* and that will move the front axle forward 4.5". I assume I'm going to find out why I did that after I get balls deep into this.
I hated installing this Ford box, I hated.making the mount for it, I hated building around it and it constantly overheating, but damn did it steer nice on the street LOL!! So this big bastard is going bye bye. I'm also going to chain the motor mount while I'm back there as shifters flopping around inside the cab gets old.
Side view of the front axle, she's too far back
The bad part about this from a pocket book perspective is the axle in the wrong spot was keeping me on a max tire size of 37s, well moving it will probably change that!
So this will go up on jackstands tomorrow!!! Can't wait to rip into this thing!!
