I have the Flowtechs and they suck, they fit on the truck and motor no problem but they hang too low and the collectors end up right in front of the trans crossmember so connecting the rest of the exhaust is a royal pain.

Why... it's not like the motor needs anything bigger.

 

Depends on what you break. There are plenty of online stores that will sell you about anything you could possibly need to fix them. Alot of times especially here in the Midwest it's easier to buy another 10.25 for $200-$300 and swap axles rather than buy the parts and fix the origional.

You can't really get much better than full float sterling axles... Well let me take that back... You might want to look into a detroit locker. The open diffs on the sterlings suck if you go off road at all.

As far as long tube headers I have heard that Pacesetters have the best fit but I have hedmans myself...

 

Because I have a set of mildly worked 1970 351 windsor heads (D0OE) to go on the motor. The Valve sizes have been enlarged to 1.96 intake and 1.60 on the exhaust side. I would like to find a set of 1 5/8" primary tube headers, because this would fit the exhaust valve better then a 1.5" diameter header tube. In this case the 1.5" headers would choke it a little bit.

 

You won't notice the 2hp you might loose to having 1.5in primarys. You'd be better off finding that 2hp elsewhere... P&P work, Cam, cold air intake, larger cat back system...

 

Upgraded heads will help but with the stock cam in that motor it'll still be well short of requiring bigger headers. And even if you did upgrade the cam(Crane 444232 with 1.7 rockers HIGHLY recommended) the slightly smaller headers will produce more TQ through the low end and mid range.. which is what you really need in a truck.

 

You can check with hedman , i know they made a set of 1 5/8 tube truck headers for the 302 , but i think you will be better off with the 1 1/2 unless all your looking for is high RPM , the 1 1/2 will give you more low end TQ.....Lew

 

This is all VERY true lol. I pull competatively w/ my 89 F250 351W / ZF 5 speed, and its taken 5 years of extreme abuse to finally break something. And that was just the yoke, nothing internal.

I agree, one major problem w/ these axles is that the pinion nut that holds the yoke on likes to come loose. Easily fixed w/ a new nut, if you catch it soon enough, and know what your doing. JUST DONT OVERTIGHTEN IT!!!!!