Disclaimer: this isn't meant to be a step by step, but merely how I did it and what snags I ran into.
I have never liked my old steering. It wandered slightly on road, and was quite labor intensive offroad. There is no slop, but just a bad design, exaggerated by the lift.
I decided to do a 78-79 F150 style steering. After looking into stock parts, I started to look at the Chevy 1 ton TRE option. It ended up being only slightly more expensive than the stock parts would have been. The advantages are that I get heavier duty parts, and a little better tie rod ground clearance.
The parts I used:
stock 78-79 F150 pitman arm
Chevy ES2026R, ES 2027L, ES2233L, ES2234R
Shakerbilt heavy duty rock rods
Chevy tapered reamer from "xcut"
The shakerbilt specs I gave Tim (at shakerbilt) were a 55 1/8" tie rod, and a 41 5/8" drag link. This ended up being cheaper than bare tubing and inserts by a few bucks.
On to the pics:
Old Tie rod clearance- about 14"
I had to grind my old pitman to get the puller on it.
I ended up taking out the steering box bolts to get the arm to clear the track bar bolt.
The Xcut reamer. For what it is worth, the pitman arm and TRE were MUCH harder to ream than the knuckles.
I flipped my tie rod over the knuckle, yielding about 3" more clearance.
I ran the drag link up thru the bottom of the pitman.
Here is ES2027L inserted in ES2233L.
The completed steering. I ended up reversing the track bar bolt to clear the tie rod ( the castle nut is toward the rear of the truck)
I tried to match my drag link and track bar angles by using the tie rod over knuckle, but it isn't exactly perfect. At least the goal of better clearance was achieved. Hopefully this will help someone else. I never could find out how long the tie rod and drag link needed to be, so hopefully this will make it easier for others.
Now you have some steering there. You should be very happy with that style over the "y" steering that you had. Should be rock solid now.
Great Job man!
I like, sounds out of my price range for now though. you did gain a decent amount of clearence on that
While it wasn't cheap, it wasn't THAT expensive compared to stock stuff. I got lucky. Here's a rough breakdown of cost:
Pitman: $10
Chevy TREs: $70
Shakerbilt tube: $170
At a grand total of $250 plus the reamer, I am not much over LMC's price for 78-79 stuff. I got 3 of my TREs off craigslist for $40 and had to buy one new.
you couldve come out even cheaper if you bought the DOM yourself.
I priced it from several places online, and after buying the inserts at $10 a piece, it didn't come out cheaper. Maybe it would have been cheaper if I bought it locally, but it wasn't cheaper thru any of the online places.
I priced it from several places online, and after buying the inserts at $10 a piece, it didn't come out cheaper. Maybe it would have been cheaper if I bought it locally, but it wasn't cheaper thru any of the online places.
6 months ago when I did mine I payed $202 for 22' of 1.5" .250 dom and $11 each for tube inserts. I guess it all depends on where you go. Metal has also had a few drastic increases since then.
__________________
Kris
Please do not PM me. My email is STGCountryboy312 at AOL dot COM
I wish I could have gotten the tube that cheap. Regardless of which way you do it, it is much better than the stock stuff, and about the same price. That's the main reason I went with it.
As far as the reamer, I believe it is a 7 degree taper. The reamer is pretty big, but you only use the first inch or so.
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