What do you charge per month for advertising? Or do you charge by the miles driven?

 

To be honest, I wish it said Riffraff... and I'll bet Clay does too.

Hell... if anybody sees it, they gotta be in a ricer - after I ran them over.

 

Barney's truck is a F-550. The F-450 has round axles....the F-550 are square. All things being equal....a square shape has a higher section modulus than a round pipe of the same nominal dimension.

The differential cover is the weak point in the case. It's best not to have one if possible, that is why the F550 and up trucks use a third member style housing. The guts come out the front which makes for a stronger unit since the 3rd member itself provides additional strength once it's installed.

The only real benefit by using a finned cover for the diff or finned pan for the transmission is for increased strength. Any fluid cooling effect is marginal at best.

 

Shake-n-Bake you're right about Bfife's truck (an '02 F-550), however, Tugly is right in thinking that some F-450s did indeed come equipped with square tube axles... because they did, and they still do today. It was around 2004 for 2005 when the Dana S110 was introduced into the F-450 chassis cab. It was seemingly a trial run for the brand new design of lighter weight axles.

Later, the Dana S110 migrated to the F-550, and the larger, heavier Dana S135 that used to be in the F550 was discontinued. The F-450 went back to being fitted with the round tube Dana 80.

Still later, both the F-450 and the F-550 had the Dana S110, but the same axle had several different ratings. Naturally, the F-550 had the heavier duty version of the 110, and the F-450 had the lighter version. But the point is, the F-450 still had the square tube axle.

As far as time line, at this point we are at model year 2008. When the F-450 pickup was introduced, it too, came with the square tube S110. In the meantime, Ford had another axle option for the F-550 with the high capacity towing and payload plus packages. The payload plus package was expanded to more wheelbases and shorter CAs, bringing the 19,500 lbs GVWR to F-550 models that previously maxed out at 17,500 lbs. This axle called for the Dana S130... the same axle used on one of the F-53 stripped motorhome chassis.

When the 2011 F-450 pickup came out, the rear axle reverted back to the Dana 80, much to the dismay of F-450 pickup fans who believe bigger is better. The chassis cab 450 remained with the Dana lighter duty version of the square tube 110. The 550 had a choice between a heavier duty 110, or the even heavier duty 130.

Now, for 2015, it gets even more interesting. Thus far we have two different square tube Dana 110 axles... one for the 450, one for the 550, and a Dana 130 for the high GVWR 550. But guess what? It appears, contrary to the Ford specifications source book, but consistent with what Ford people have said verbally, and what Ford customers are finding under their new 2015 F-450 pickups... it appears that the pickup is getting a heavier axle than the standard F-550 is fitted with. Strangely, the 2015 F-450 pickup might have the Dana S130 axle, that is normally rated for 14,660 lbs RGAWR, but in the pickup implementation, is downrated to between 9,100 to 9,600 RGAWR.

The only reason I can think of for this, if true, is that the pickup has the higher HP and TQ ratings, that exceed, substantially, the input HP and TQ limitations that Dana specified for the S110/S130 family of axles. So perhaps Ford has installed an "overbuilt" axle as a mitigation measure for the higher input HP. This last statement is purely conjecture on my part.

Just thought this all was interesting. Sorry OP!

 

Great info! Thanks for listing all the relevant info in an easy to digest format. The likely reason why the F-450/550 chassis cabs have lower rated axle options has to do with fleet owner needs. The lower rated axles allow the dealer to legally derate the GVWR of the vehicle. This becomes important when a fleet owner wants to purchase an F-550 with a 17,999 lb GVWR or an F350 SRW with a 10,000 lb rating. Both vehicles come with higher GVWR standard....which sounds okay for private use but it's a total pain for fleet use.

For instance, I have 3 International trucks on order with aerial service bodies on them. The chassis are IH 4300 with a 35,000 GVWR standard. FAWR is 12k lbs, RAWR is 23,000 lbs. We are deleting the rear axle and optioning a 22,000 lb axle with 23,000 spring packs. This change allows us to specify whatever GVWR we desire and we desire 26,000 lbs (for obvious reasons).

We have 4 Ford F-550 trucks (2014 models) with a similar situation. If I remember correctly, the standard rating was 19,500 lbs but we wanted 17,999 lbs so we specified a real axle change, and then optioned the spring pack we wanted. A GVWR of 18,000 lbs means our drivers are not required to have medical cards for intra-state driving (which is 99% of the time).

The truck business is very convoluted....just when I think I have things figured out the manufacturers change the rules so I have to start all over again. Makes me tired.....