I bought this truck, after years of wanting one of these models. Remembered when I was a kid and being enamored with trucks from a couple of drivers I got to know...

So now I want to convert my single axle LN9000 1980 model into a "big" pickup truck..no, don't want one of those "wanna be" types...haha...I'm figuring that down the road when I get that far, I'll have to rip a bed down the middle and widen it a bit so that it might better match width-wise..but of course I'll be on the lookout for different types and do some measurements...

Anyhow, the ride on this thing will shake ones' teeth out! The slightest bump and the rear end will loosen up your innards...so...how can I rework these springs to make a better ride? Oh yes, I'd like to have air ride, but I'm just a poor boy, and those kinds of costs are not in my immediate future (51 with child support for eleven-year-old daughter tends to scuttle any real funds for the near future..haha)

I have some pics of it on my "gallery" section...
Thanks for any ideas...

Tim in Chattanooga

 

I have a small gravel box on my 88 single axle L8000 and it rides very well, some weight on the back end of your`s would certainly help.
What are your plans and use for it?

 

It's always going to be a hard ride empty. You can pull several leaves out of the spring pack and replace them with spacers. A lot of work.

Does it have shocks on it?

Air is really the only "smooth" set up for a truck like that.

 

The springs will never give you a nice ride without 10K or more on the back of it.

I pulled half the pack out of a hendrickson spring over beam to convert to a single axle and that truck rides like the axle is bolted to the frame.


Air ride is the only way to go.

Sounds like youre not in a big hurry. If you ever plan to finish a project like this its going to take some money. Hate to burst your bubble. But as long as youre not in a rush you can atleast wait for a good deal. You should be able to find a solo axle with air ride all the torque rods and leveling valves for 300-500 eventually.

You will not get a truck to ride comfortably without.. Or atleast ive never seen it..

Maybe the old torsoin bar suspension?? Never driven a truck with them before.. That stuff should be real cheap.. 10 cents a pound save it from the scrap yard.

Also. Maybe in your case. It would be a good idea to use the 1 ton suspension off the truck you get the bed off. That may ride pretty decent? Put some helper bags on down the road for the heavier loads..

Also what engine and trans do you have in there?

Have fun with it.

They really are great trucks. if only the cabs were made of aluminum.. Might have helped with resale and the whole direction the big fords went.

 

Good information...thanks folks...and more to ponder on...

Let's see; planned use? Mainly a "big toy" but useful...you see, years back I had the dream to always be a trucker, and finally was able to get started in it (and those days are some stories that are almost hard to believe). When a teen, I took a love of this style of truck--even though for many years I was a die-hard cabover fan--and thought one day I'd have one for personal use. Of course it didn't take long to realize the fantasy job of what I thought a truck driver had ended up crashing my dreams..haha...but still, there was nothing like riding up high, air ride seat jacked all the way up (beating my head against the roof), and running through the gears, double-clutching, What a commanding way to ride the highways...I still miss that feeling, so now I have it somewhat...

I'm going to either build a pickup bed from scratch (to better match the cab body lines) or either rework an older Ford bed. So I'll have a BIG pickup truck that I can jump in to make any hauls that I now have to use a little trailer hooked up to my Honda Civic..ever had one of those loaded a bit too heavy, get up to about 45, and the front end start bouncing all over the road? And then trying to calm yourself, sucking the seat up your tail, and trying to ease 'er down to get control again, then getting off side of road to "clean yourself up"? haha...yep, didn't take but one time to start paying closer attention to how much I put on that little trailer!

Nope, a BIG pickup truck...I've not seen any yet..closest thing has been that International CST rig--pretty cool, but not quite there for me..not to mention the price!

So you see, I can get my jollies and still do some of my piddling work with it too..
It has a Detroit V6-92 Turbo in it, and a Fuller nine-speed. Fellow I bought it from had been using it for farm use, hauling a flatbed to haul hay...he had it for a few years, and I think a neighbor of his had it for another few years doing the same kind of work too..hadn't been registered since 2003...
When I got it home, I took stock of the crud that had built up in and on it for a lot of years..so far, I stripped the floor and carpet, shoveled out about a dozen shovel-fulls of crud, then put down a foam layer of insulation, new carpet, carpeted the lower half of the back wall, and even covered the doghouse with carpet...Been working in the dash/wheel areas..still have not to do a real cleaning on them yet, as I've been fixing gauges, lights, and some wiring, and also a lot of hmmmming...and more hmmmmming...trying to figure out just what this is, or that is, and what is it doing, and where does this wire go, since it has power on it and no idea where it leads to...haha....a real puzzle...spent about three evenings trying to figure out why fuel gauge didn't work. I went through every possible wire, redid connections--you name it. The one thing I didn't do? I didn't go back to fundamentals...finally walking in to my local O'Reilly's carrying the gauge..looking at possible replacement..and puzzled look..tired...and mainly just looking to get break and get away. My main man Phil (who seems to know just about everything there is to know about the workings of RVs and trucks) asked me how it was going. I told him the story..showed him the gauge..he grinned, handed it back to me, and only said "put another insulator on 'this' post and try it"...There was already an insulator on one of the posts, so I went back and tried it, and voila! it worked like a charm! Then it came to me why it was doing what it was doing...When checking the sending unit out of the tank, I had the theory right and proved it, but didn't take it all the way to the gauge...doh! haha....now that's funny! Good thing I don't do this for a living!

The saga continues...

 

Finally, some accomplishment...Of course there are the little things (looks) that most anyone would want to start with, so I've bought a few things...new clearance lights (although these existing ones look kinda neat--original?) There are only four, and that just don't cut it (five for the BIG look..haha) Chances of finding one like them I figure are slim, and I already had to rig a beehive lens to replace one that was missing.

The rooftop horn didn't work, so off it came and into the building on the workbench...had some crud clogged up in it..cleaned it out, and cleaned up the plastic diaphrams and put it back together...Ran air through it...NOTHING...geez....back apart..noticed these metal one-inch "dishes" were really rusted, so I cleaned them up some, pushed out the concave part of it to almost flat, and put it all back together with silicone replacing the deteriorated original gaskets...came back out next day, applied air, and DANG! About lost my hearing! haha...works now! (hmmm...maybe that explains why I keep saying "huh?" so much...)

Then headlights stopped working...spent an entire evening tracking down all wires from hood back...all seemed ok, except I did pull most of them to clean the rusty contact areas...Finally, decided it just had to be the switch; pulled it, and started probing the socket, and I got headlights. Trying to find a switch, price, and having to probably order, I decided to get rid of it, for a more modern approach...Got me some neat, lighted switches (not your typical toggles) and wired them in for headlights and tailights...put them in dash just under the Clearance and Trailer toggles...they light up a nice hue of blue when on...nice, clean look too...ran the wires down to kick panel on drivers' side, and installed a four-place fuse panel and terminated all the wiring there, with fuses installed...even ran another for a toggle switch to control the cab light. I mounted it in one of the empty gauge spaces at top right...since I have the headliner out (to get to the horn and to replace the clearance lights, I might even add another cab light toward the front to better light up the area of the dash...

Hoping today to get the horn back on, running lights replaced, new insulation put up, then headliner put back in...IF I get all that done, then might get to put steering wheel back on and work on horn button area (that is gone, and didn't work either). Found some problem with one of the pins that make contact with the underside of the wheel--had a decent size "blob" of deformed metal on the top, so I cut it off...will see if it still makes contact with the wheel, then I'll adapt an accessory horn button to the wheel to try and make it work. Did happen to find while under the hood that the city horn wasn't even hooked up, so I plugged it back in, shorted the contacts on the steering column, and IT WORKED! So...tie it up, and should be ok...would be nice to find a new wheel though, with all the correct guts...

And, the saga continues...

 

Oh, and check my "Gallery" for more pics of the stuff I'm uncovering, fixing, discovering, questioning..etc...

 

Almost forgot another episode...
Took it down to a local truck place to check the front end out and line it up...while waiting, several guys came around to look it over, and many said "hadn't seen one like this before"...haha...dang, is it THAT OLD?

Day before, I happened to notice that the drag link bar that runs all the way across was bent towards the front axle, like someone had run onto something backing up...so I ran it over to my workplace shop, got some chains and such, and after a couple of hours, had it pretty darned straight. On way back home, it steered better, but just when I thought I'd pat myself on the back, at about forty-five, it commenced to start wobbling/hopping a bit...
Next day at the truck place, they got it in their bay, up off the wheels, and called to me...while watching and one guy grabbing the tire/wheel and shaking, we say quite a bit of movement..he thought kingpins were gone, but another guy watching and I say the most movement in the tie-rod ends. They were shot. So they said don't waste your money until you get these replaced. Off to the house I went...a lot more slowly I might add...ordered them at my O'Reilly's (my man Phil comes through again, with having to measure all the critical parts of it, and right at closing time too). Luckily I had been spraying the affected areas with rust spray for a few days, so I had them off and back on in about an hour. While off, I managed to chain up the link across the truck frame, and using my floor jack, managed to straighten it out just a bit more for an almost near perfect fix...improvise..improvise...it wasn't pretty but it worked..haha...
Managed to get them threaded up pretty close to where originals were. Couldn't use thread count, as these were made a bit different...Drove it, and it helped a lot. Will take it back to the truck place in a few days or so to have another go at it...

Almost forgot...shocks? No, does not have shocks on the rear end, just all of those leafs above the axle. If I remember correctly, the last owner told me it had rear end problems, so instead of repairing it, they just put in another whole unit. The thing that confuses me about it though is that I notice that there is a difference in space between the frame and the inside tire on each side...My man Phil thinks it's so to keep the rear end in a straight alignment with the driveshaft...odd, isn't that? Will try and get some pics to show that more as well...

300 to 500 is not unreasonable for an air ride system, so that is doable I think...but had heard from another too, that trying to use the leaf system off a one ton might be a workable solution too...I like that idea as well. Might be easier for me to be able to do it here at home..
That being said, also learned another valuable lesson about working on this thing at home...first time I tried to jack up the front axle with my 3 ton floor jack, it got to the point that the tires were about to come off the ground and QUIT...hmmm....so another trip to the parts store to get a 12 ton bottle jack....NOW she lifts right up....haha...

The saga will continue...

 

Almost forgot another episode...
Took it down to a local truck place to check the front end out and line it up...while waiting, several guys came around to look it over, and many said "hadn't seen one like this before"...haha...dang, is it THAT OLD?

Day before, I happened to notice that the drag link bar that runs all the way across was bent towards the front axle, like someone had run onto something backing up...so I ran it over to my workplace shop, got some chains and such, and after a couple of hours, had it pretty darned straight. On way back home, it steered better, but just when I thought I'd pat myself on the back, at about forty-five, it commenced to start wobbling/hopping a bit...
Next day at the truck place, they got it in their bay, up off the wheels, and called to me...while watching and one guy grabbing the tire/wheel and shaking, we say quite a bit of movement..he thought kingpins were gone, but another guy watching and I say the most movement in the tie-rod ends. They were shot. So they said don't waste your money until you get these replaced. Off to the house I went...a lot more slowly I might add...ordered them at my O'Reilly's (my man Phil comes through again, with having to measure all the critical parts of it, and right at closing time too). Luckily I had been spraying the affected areas with rust spray for a few days, so I had them off and back on in about an hour. While off, I managed to chain up the link across the truck frame, and using my floor jack, managed to straighten it out just a bit more for an almost near perfect fix...improvise..improvise...it wasn't pretty but it worked..haha...
Managed to get them threaded up pretty close to where originals were. Couldn't use thread count, as these were made a bit different...Drove it, and it helped a lot. Will take it back to the truck place in a few days or so to have another go at it...

Almost forgot...shocks? No, does not have shocks on the rear end, just all of those leafs above the axle. If I remember correctly, the last owner told me it had rear end problems, so instead of repairing it, they just put in another whole unit. The thing that confuses me about it though is that I notice that there is a difference in space between the frame and the inside tire on each side...My man Phil thinks it's so to keep the rear end in a straight alignment with the driveshaft...odd, isn't that? Will try and get some pics to show that more as well...

300 to 500 is not unreasonable for an air ride system, so that is doable I think...but had heard from another too, that trying to use the leaf system off a one ton might be a workable solution too...I like that idea as well. Might be easier for me to be able to do it here at home..
That being said, also learned another valuable lesson about working on this thing at home...first time I tried to jack up the front axle with my 3 ton floor jack, it got to the point that the tires were about to come off the ground and QUIT...hmmm....so another trip to the parts store to get a 12 ton bottle jack....NOW she lifts right up....haha...

The saga will continue...