i think that looks freakin amazing!!!

 

While there is a lot of debate on the TTB front end and it's durability vs. a Dana 60, I am still of the opinion that 4x4 trucks and Jeeps should have a solid axle up front. So a D60 swap is on deck. Hope the weather holds a little longer...

My brother has a shop that is to die for. So I decided that I had enough rolling around on the floor and took my truck to his place and invaded.

She has no more TTB, flip flop or what ever uncomplementary nick name is used in your neck of the woods for Ford's split front axle.



New front springs from Uniontown Auto Spring were installed also. They built the packs that were on my '79 and did a great job. Their service is awesome.



Looking better already.



While I did get the track bar in the purchase of this D60, I did not get the driver's side lower cap for the U-bolts. We scabbed an old U-bolt plate on that side so we could hoist the old girl up and measure the driveshaft as well as check for crossmember clearance. Most every thread I have read on here say's 1 1/2" shortening of the driveshaft should be enough. I measured the before and after at almost exactly that same difference, but am leaning towards taking an additional 1/2" out (2" total) due to the old springs being pretty saggy and don't want the driveshaft to shove the yoke into the transfer case if the new springs would lose a little hight and bottom out in the rough stuff. If you've got some input on shortening 1 1/2 or 2", I am listening...Hopefully this week also produces the correct part for the driver's side U-bolts...


I think the crossmember clearance will be sufficient...

 

When I did the D60 conversion on my '90 F250, I ended up having to shorten the front drive shaft 1.5". I have the same amount of cross member clearance that you show in your pic. I wanted to use the CV driveshaft that came w/ the D60 but it wouldn't fit the yoke on the TC so I had to use the original driveshaft that on the truck. I haven't had a single vibration issue or anything else, it works like it's supposed to.

 

Thanks for the input Firewood. I discussed this with my local driveshaft shop, Champion Driveshaft and Brake. They said since the shaft physically went in, it already has about 1/2" slip and shortening it 1.5" should be about perfect. Did you have your's rebalanced? I have had shafts shortened for 2wd engine/tranny conversions before while on a tight budget and just had them reassembled with the same index. And no vibes. Trying it again on this one...we shall see.

 

So we had the truck up in the air and decided to replace the front axle shaft seals. Aftermarket seals were almost 3X what the Ford seals were in price. So we decided to wait on the OEM parts rather than using the Ching Chang stuff.

A note to those doing the D60 conversion, it gets pricey quick. All the steering components, ball joints, u joints and calipers (which were all marginal on the original TTB) added up to a pretty good chunk of change. I will have almost 1/2 of the initial cost of the truck in the D60 swap.

I also bought a trac loc diffential for the rear axle, and shouldn't have. I have always checked for a locking or clutch diff by jacking the truck up, trans in neutral and turning one wheel. If the other wheel turns opposite, open diff. If it turns same way, limited slip, locker, posi, etc. Well this old girl had a trac loc in it and the clutches were so wasted that the other wheel turned the opposite direction. Lesson learned - $180 dollar clutch pack would have worked just as well as the $400 complete differential...

While the truck is stranded at my brothers waiting on our work schedules to jibe as well as a few parts (drivers lower ubolt plate, among others), I decided to try out a new gravity paint gun given to me by a good friend who was moving out of the area. While I am still not as comfortable with the new gun as my old Binks, it does seem to use much less paint...


Freshened up the look of the old Myers E-60.


I am partial to my old 5 slot mags, even if they are 16.5". But I am going to run stock steelies in the winter salt and snow. And they were a little rusty where the stock hubcaps mounted. I know there will be a lot of haters when I say I trashed the stock hub caps, but damn those things rattled a lot...Anyhow, we wire wheeled them and used the rust converter before applying paint with the new gravity gun.


After paint.


Hope all my FTE friends have a great blue oval turkey day and please everyone keep posting/sharing your old Ford info and pictures.

 

So power washed the salt and crud off the '96 today after a crummy winter and it occurred to me that I should share how well this thing has held up after 4 winters of abuse. You can see the drivers door at the bottom is bashed in as well as the bed right behind the cab. This was a snowplowing/phone pole mishap that I should have been chained up but was lazy and paid for it. There are plenty of minor chips, the paint isn't as shiny as it was and I need to apply some more seam sealer under the cab corner patches that is coming loose. To be fair though, it hasn't been waxed since that first year...

 

I also overhauled the engine, my brother did the transmission and transfer case and I am going to put some info in the 460 engine section about what we did for port work and cam profile...

 

Hey there 77flh ! I'm new to the FTE site and am in the process of waiting for all the snow to melt up here in Canada so I can start work on my 90 f250 project. How well did the bed liner you used hold up over the 4 years of wear and tear and was there much prep work involved? The picture I seen of yours looks like it turned out pretty good however I have read a lot of mixed reviews online so I just wanted to get your opinion. Also the same with the body paint, was there much prep work involved?

 

That Rustoleum bed coating is OK, but is starting to show plenty of scrapes. It is way better than regular paint but no where near as tough as the two part commercial grade liner. I have shot the commercial grade for family and friends on other trucks and it is easy to work with too. Just pricey. This truck was on a very tight budget and I can pretty well destroy a truck bed in a few years with firewood and coal hauling. This bed has bad whoops between the cross braces now and the front panel is pushed in badly from overloading it with wood. So for me, the expense of the commercial liner wasn't worth it.

In my opinion, if your goal is to look good for a couple years or so, use the cheap coating, if you are looking at keeping it nice for a decade, spend the extra $$.

Any paint job is 95% prep work. If you use high dollar base/clear or cheap Rustoleum like I did, the prep work makes the job. I spent a substantial amount of time on the prep work, and I think it was worth it.

Good luck and start a thread. I love the builds. Especially the ones done on the cheap.

 

Glad you revived this thread 77FLH. Some very impressive work. Looks like it's holding up well!

 

Thanks for the kind words. I believe it held up well also, especially for the low investment. My '79 survived 13+ years of abuse at our house and based on that, I am hoping for at least 10 out of this one. We just freshened up the engine, transmission and t-case, so hopefully I can stay on top of the rust and get 6 more out of her.

 

Started reading from the begining and wondered how it was holding up.

You did a really NICE job on it. Looks like its holding up great.

WELL DONE!!

Thanks for the followup.

Todd

 

Ok thanks for the info! The box is one of the few things rust free on my truck so I plan on spending the money for a high quality spray in bed liner along with painting the underside with POR15.


I'll start a thread on here when I start my project but it's looking like it's going to be a while yet. 6 inches of snow on Friday here and getting 40 centimeters as we speak.