So, with how life has ended up, I’ve got myself a situation with needing more room than my Pickup can supply for longer road trips. So I drove a couple states away and picked up a rust free, and what was suppose to be clean and only a couple dents. Well it has a lot of dents, but I couldn’t pass up the price. I started off with the front axle swap, next up will be the trans/t-case/gas tank. It’s a V10, has a 4 inch lift as it sits and 35s. Gutted the interior, resealed Windows, put new carpet in it, did a tune up, fixed broken exhaust manifold studs so far. It’s sitting about 115,000 miles. Here’s some pics of what I’ve got done so far.


Here it is all stock and on stands waiting to start the swap.




05 F350 front axle set in place



Custom radius arm bracket



F350 coil springs and Excursion shocks



Trac bar bracket,van steering mated up with the Superduty steering



99-04 Superduty grill guard made to fit.

There’s more to come as time goes on....
He’s it on jack stands all stock right b4 the swap started.

 

Cool, I was going to ask if you used Ujoint's kit, but I see you made your own brackets and used coil springs.

 

Unjoint has a leaf and a coil kit, but I’m WAY TO CHEAP to spend that much on a kit!! The one thing I might order from them is the stuff to shorten the gas tank. I have to make adaptors to hook the Superduty axle to the van sway bar yet too... Another thing I don’t like about kits is you can’t push the front axle forward as much as I like. I’m running 35s on a 4 inch everything I’ve seen you need a 6 inch for 35s.

 

Added the steering stabilizer and front calipers and brackets. I couldn’t get the pins to move AT ALL on the brackets that where on it, and one of the pistons where messed up so figured I’d do both.

 

That looks great. Pushing the axle forward is a great idea. Hell the tire turned almost rubs with only 245's on.

 

Ya, I hear ya, it had 265s on it when I got it and they rubbed horribly bad. Thes 35s only rub a little bit with the wheel turned and hit a bump just right. I’ve pushed the axle forward on a few vehicles to clear bigger tires easier, like my pickup I’m running 38s on a 6 inch lift and the tires don’t touch the fenders at all.

 

Hers a bunch of random pics from the last couple days of work.. had to cut down the gas tank for tcase clearance, mod the crossmember, the shift cable bracket, and have yet to do the tcase shifter. But I got it driving again. Had to redo the drivers side exhaust because it wouldn’t fit, or let a front driveshaft be installed.

 

Nice work!

 

Wow that gas tank is quite the tight fit! The guy I recently got a full floater axle from has 40" tires on his van and a super duty axle(s) swap. He told me about having to cut the tank too.

 

Thanks.

Yes the tank is a bit closer than I thought it was going to have a bit more clearance than that. Idk if I’ll be able pull the tcase without dropping the tank.. the older body style vans are a lot easier to 4x4 swap than this style. Lol.

 

Oh really? I am loving this thread man. Great job, and keep us posted on your progress. Cotton

 

Love This thread nice work. Take off those running boards and make your own. Just sayin. Looks sikk.

 

Yep, the older vans, like the 79 I swapped didn’t need gas tank mods, or worry about the computer not liking what’s going on. I have to do some mods to get the speedo to work proper on this. The older ones just had to extend the speedo cable.

 

I just ran across your '79 4x4 Build. Very cool. Looks like you went leaf-sprung on that one. I have pipe-dreams of doing something like this with my '85 maybe someday, but with a coil-spring front if at all possible. Nice work. Cotton

 

Ya I did leafs on that one, as far as actually getting the front axle under the vehicle, IMO, coils and leafs are about the same amount of work, but the rest of the work after that is the difference in the older rigs vs the newer ones.