My brother and me both had strokes of amazing luck today for our projects.
While waiting for a lady to call me to go look at possible new daily driver replacement, we hit up a local autowreckers and searched the few remaining '87-96 trucks they had left. I walked away with a hard to find 40/20/40 seat pan with tracks (finally!)

And my brother walked away with a minty '96 diesel rad support (picture makes it look a little rusty but if it got any rust it's just surface).

Afterwards I picked up the new DD (as soon as I work out some issues with it; see other thread if interested). All in all a good day

 

great find on the pan and sliders!!

getting harder and harder to find. I never sell mine.

I have 3 and I hoard them lol

 

I'm still pretty surprised I found one. We were just about to turn around and head back to the truck when my brother said we should at least walk to the very end of the yard. Sure enough in small cleared out part of the yard sat a '96 7.3 RCLB all alone. I swear it was out of a movie, just needed angels singing and a light shining down on it
I'm assuming since I took the tracks as well I can just unbolt my Bronco seat's tracks and bolt these on. I'll have to wait until next weekend to try.

The weather is getting a little better but the snow is still slowing my acquiring of the 2 trucks for the cab and box. I got to do a motor/tranny swap on my new DD anyways.

 

Great finds! Those radiator supports go for a lot of money here. Crazy money.

What's the new DD?

 

They're stupidly rare up here too.
The new daily driver is a '94 F-150 but it has some mechanical issues that I'm back and forth about fixing.
Needs a new tranny, the diffs gone through, new gas tanks and brakes.
Could put the money fixing it into my project and slap the DD body on my fixed up frame and drive that until I get the body work done on the other cab and box.

 

Definitely sounds like a lot of work for a DD.

 

Ordered some more parts yesterday to finish up getting the frame ready.
Got new brake parts all around (except for the rotors I turned earlier so I could get the frame rolling) and new Monroe shocks all around.
Weather is supposed to be "warmish" (9C/48F) this weekend so I'm hoping to get some stuff done

Trying to find a good exhaust system for the truck. I already planned to use the Walker Y-Pipe (Part #45166) but I'm having trouble which way to go after that. Not much choices for a "cat back system" for the 4.9L, nor am I running a cat (ditched the AIR pump and plugged the holes in the head).
Should I just get a 5.0/5.8 system and make it work?
Torn about a dual set up after the muffler too. I know it won't make any difference in performance but I've always liked the look of duals that dump before the rear tires.
Thoughts?

 

Cleaned out the crushed bed today in preparation of removing it. In the process my brother and I bolted the ZF and transfer case in to check driveshaft length and to make sure I had ordered the right u-joints. Rear driveshaft should be good, it pulls the yoke out slightly but not too bad.

Front will be an issue though. In my travels I had come across people claiming a Dana 60 swap on a F-250 may or may not have to use the F-350 front driveshaft. In my case I needed it and the donor truck didn't have it. So I'm stuck getting one made I guess. Had my truck had a E4OD this might not have been an issue I would think.




After that we decided to put together my seats for grins.
From:

To:


Excuse the trash bags, they were for storage purposes and not some hillbilly seat covers
Giving it some thought, and the fact the autowreckers want $350 for dash and interior trim, and I have this perfectly decent blue interior from this truck. And my bucket seats are blue anyways. I'm just going to swap this interior into the new donor cab and probably end up going with a nice Royal Blue paint job like this:


Finished the day off test fitting the serpentine belt since the parts store didn't ask if my truck was A/C or not when I ordered it through work. Luckily it worked out with the added A/C pump and the deleted A.I.R. pump.

 

Looks like you're making some good progress! Warming up here in New England too, can't wait to get some projects going!

That front driveshaft is too long? Should be easy enough to have it cut down and balanced.

 

FWIW, I modified my trans crossmember when I put my dana 60 in. I cut out half of the crossmember directly under the driveshaft, then boxed/gusseted down to get it back to strength. in all likelihood, it'd be fine with the cutout as is...

 

Thanks, the snow is melting pretty rapidly and it's turning into a muddy mess at the farm.
Length doesn't seem bad, the angle is the issue. It needs to come out of the transfer case a few inches and break at a steeper angle down to the front diff.

Any chance you have a picture of that? It seems like I would have to cut out a lot, like a good 3/4 of the trans cross member to get the angle right. I was going to go talk to the local drive line shop and see what they figure getting one made would cost. Parts Geek and eBay list them around $250-300 range, hopefully local isn't too much more.

 

I could get you a pic, but I wont be around the truck for a while. to the tune of a few months....maybe I could get a buddy to snap one.


you could cut out 3/4 of the crossmember, hell you could cut out the entire thing....with enough support welded in the right places it'll be stronger than factory.


also check your pinion angle up front, if its pointing down (away from the t-case) you can shim the axle to correct the angle and youll be helping your driveshaft clear the crossmember as well. of course, you cant really check it until you have weight up there.


if you don't care about ground clearance (the loss would be marginal) you could make a new crossmember that bolts to the bottom of the frame out of some square tubing. I personally like the stamped steel factory xmembers, and the ground clearance, but ive built the tube xmembers and theyre a dirt cheap option.


you also need to wait until you have the engine (and everything else) back in the engine bay. you could get 3-4 normal sized people to stand up front and see how the weight helps your driveshaft/crossmember relationship, but until you have the engine in there you wont know how much modification you really need. I have ~3-4" of lift and basically an identical setup as yours, so all said and done you shouldn't have to do much more than I did.


one more thing....once your engine is in you may need to tune your front springs. I don't know what springs you are using, but unless you bought an entire suspension package it is likely you will need to pull some springs to get it to ride level. the swap generates a bit of lift if nothing else is changed.


id worry about xmember after all these things are addressed.

 

All good points. I'll wait then. With the engine, cab and front end on it will squat and maybe that 3/4 will turn into 3/4" instead.
The front (and rear springs) were from the donor 350. I didn't want the ride quality issues reusing the TTB springs on the 60. Down the road I plan to box the front of the frame and slap in a RSK and Super Duty springs for the lift and the bonus ride quality improvement. So I'm sure that will also effect the front drive shaft angle more as well.

 

sheeeeeeyat I forgot you didn't have the cab on yet. definitely wait, youre going to be adding 1000+ lbs up there. that will provide inches @ the axle, and help substantially on the xmember end. the stock f3 springs are pretty "squishy", you may not have to hack at all.

 

I am getting by pretty good with my F250 front drive shaft after installing the D60. I have just a tiny bit of vibration at 35mph and 45 mph. I don't drive any faster than that in 4WD on slick roads. If I need to go faster than that, it is clear enough to run in 2WD and unlock the hubs.