Envy meter ascending.
Nice work.
Nice tools.

 

A beautiful truck! with that much lift, id be horrified trying to back up and/or park it with those little mirrors......at a more reasonable height and 35" tires it ought to be the envy of most of us Ford guys here!

 

Spoiled rotten with lathe.

Your work and work space look truely professional!

 

It only took 3 months to finish the axle and 3 months to post it. I'll try to be a little more timely with the updates.
Thanks for the complement Andre!

Thanks again for your help buddy!

Thanks Bently, I'll have more updates soon(er)

I need your help installing the Mini-Maxx, I can't find the OBDII connector on this dang thing. It's all good with the wife since it's out of warranty.

Thanks Bump. I like that nickname.

Thanks for the complements. The press was cheap and the lathe was a fixer-upper.
Thanks Marc, I just saw the pic of your FE, it looks great. I was going to pull out my FE and replace it with a I6 or 6BT, but you and HIO have me thinking about keeping the FE.

Thanks Bob, I agree 100% on the mirrors and it's getting lowered about 5". I scored a set of West Coast Jr's off of ebay, now I just need to clean them up.

Yes I am, and thank you very much.

 

I'll throw my two cents in for the FE by saying, it's a very discounted and under rated motor in the rest of the hot rod kingdom and it's a Ford. That automatically gets my vote.
But beyond that, you can stroke the **** out of them without a lot of block work and get boat loads of torque.
The after market is red hot right now for them as folks are waking up to the potential.
As far as the mileage thing, my theory is that if you build lots a torque you don't have to push on the go pedal so much (except for fun) so you save many drops of go juice. And you can put an overdrive unit inline and have the torque to turn it at low vacuum levels saving more fuel. I'll let you know how that theory works out.
Nice work on your build.

 

Thanks for the input Marc, I'm still a newb and need all the guidance I can get.

 

Helluva newb judging by your rear end work and truck.

 

Thanks Marc, I've done some machinery resto's, just not anything automotive.

 

Hey Tomahawk,How did you make out with the disk swap in the front.If I remember correctly.Did you use Blackbird?Your rig pictures look tremendous

 

Hi David,
Yes I did, thanks again for the Blackbirds pro tip! Randy at Blackbirds got me everything I needed. There was some machining required on my part but it was no big deal. I just got the front axle off and I need to do some shock mount work on it, paint it, put it together and I will post the whole process in it's own thread.
Sorry for the delayed reply.
Gavin

 

New Skyjacker rear leaf springs to replace the PO2s springs.


It was a PITA getting the old springs out, the bushings wallered out around the mounting holes on the rear hangers. I had drill them out so I could weld in some bushings.


I had to pry apart the hanger.


Milled out the old bushings.



I turned the bushings for the rear hangers and turned thin bushings so the rubber bushings were tight.


Painted up and ready to install.


Setup for centering the bushings in the hanger.



I'll have to finish welding the top of the flange when I take the bed off.


Wow, the new leaf springs are really bowed. At first I was going WTH??


Finally, I got the rear axle back under the truck....


....and I got the new seat covers on.



Next up, removing the front clip.

 

That looks absolutely FANTASTIC Gavin! Well done. I really like to see the attention to detail and making the time to do it right.

 

Everything looks great Gavin, it passes my inspection .......

 

Thanks for the complements Andre! I could not do it without help from the great people here at FTE.

Thanks Gerry, I appreciate that!

 

that's a good looking truck, nice interior too.