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- Mar 24, 2008
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- Howard City Michigan
- Vehicle Year
- 1993
- Make / Model
- Ford
- Engine Size
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- Automatic
Alright, figure I would post this up. I am building this for a buddy of mine. What we have here is a 99 Explorer Sport, 4.0l, automatic, 4x4. What we are doing is a fully built Dana 60, locked, 5.38 gears, full chromo shafts, and a 14 bolt in the rear. We are going to use Fox 16" air shocks with extended and heimed radius arms (like mine), full hydro steering, and undecided on wheels and tires as of now.
here it is in the shop
Started out by pulling the old 8.8 out
The the 14 bolt swap started. We are using the ruffstuff weld on pirches to push the axle back 3". these...
I had to modify them quite a bit to fit the 14 bolt tube and on the leafs, more on that later
First we needed to decide on what we were going to use for the rear leafs because the stock sport leaf is a mono leaf. We first chose to use chevy 63's to get a stretch on it of about 6" by keeping the front hanger in the same spot. Giving us a total rear stretch of 9"
Ummm, no, that isn't going to work. The 63's gave it too much lift even without shackles on them and the stretch just looked retarded. So I decided to use the stock mono leaf, then add a ranger leaf pack to it. I am using a ruffstuff 6" shackle and it has a 3" stretch from the pirch. Just right
It got a small comp cut going on now too.
Now brings up the issues with the spring pirches. They are made to fit around a 2.5" spring like a stock ranger leaf, but the mono leaf is 3" wide so I had to slot the holes and make it work. Ended up dicking around with these thing for a few days before I got them right. All in all, next time around, I will just use standard pirches and find my stretch somewhere else.
So on to the front, I had to yank all the suspension crap out, couple hours later I a big pile of junk....
Then about 4 hours more of cutting with a cut off wheel, sawsall and hammering I have this
What is next, besides lot of grinding is to plate the frame, bend up some shock hoops, make some shock tabs, figure out how I am mounting the radius arms and then a track bar.
I will update as I get more done, thanks for looking!
here it is in the shop
Started out by pulling the old 8.8 out
The the 14 bolt swap started. We are using the ruffstuff weld on pirches to push the axle back 3". these...
I had to modify them quite a bit to fit the 14 bolt tube and on the leafs, more on that later
First we needed to decide on what we were going to use for the rear leafs because the stock sport leaf is a mono leaf. We first chose to use chevy 63's to get a stretch on it of about 6" by keeping the front hanger in the same spot. Giving us a total rear stretch of 9"
Ummm, no, that isn't going to work. The 63's gave it too much lift even without shackles on them and the stretch just looked retarded. So I decided to use the stock mono leaf, then add a ranger leaf pack to it. I am using a ruffstuff 6" shackle and it has a 3" stretch from the pirch. Just right
It got a small comp cut going on now too.
Now brings up the issues with the spring pirches. They are made to fit around a 2.5" spring like a stock ranger leaf, but the mono leaf is 3" wide so I had to slot the holes and make it work. Ended up dicking around with these thing for a few days before I got them right. All in all, next time around, I will just use standard pirches and find my stretch somewhere else.
So on to the front, I had to yank all the suspension crap out, couple hours later I a big pile of junk....
Then about 4 hours more of cutting with a cut off wheel, sawsall and hammering I have this
What is next, besides lot of grinding is to plate the frame, bend up some shock hoops, make some shock tabs, figure out how I am mounting the radius arms and then a track bar.
I will update as I get more done, thanks for looking!