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DRW Sterling

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Old Jan 17, 2020 | 08:03 PM
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DRW Sterling

I'm gathering from a couple of threads here that there is such a thing as a dually Sterling in OBS and earlier. That surprised me. We are buying an odd bird, picking it up tomorrow as a project truck for my son. It was supposedly converted to dually by the PO, but I see no adapters/spacers in there. And I do see the characteristic plug welds where the tubes meet the center section, so it sure looks like a Sterling. It started life as an 1989 SRW F250, so would not have a Dana axle.

Once we have it here at the ranch I'll take some pics and update this post.
 
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Old Jan 17, 2020 | 11:14 PM
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I believe the dually Sterling axles were fairly common in the late 80s/early 90s.
 
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Old Jan 18, 2020 | 07:36 AM
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95 DRW 10.25 here.
 
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Old Jan 18, 2020 | 09:12 AM
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We're dragging that truck back here today. Because the DRW Sterling measures several inches wider, I wonder what we'll find under there when we measure it? This was originally a SRW F250 cclb.
 
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Old Jan 18, 2020 | 09:13 AM
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my 88 F350 4X4 dually had a sterling 10.25 axle under it.
 
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Old Jan 18, 2020 | 09:49 AM
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It was the only axle offered under the F350 DRW trucks back in the day. I have exactly an '89 DRW pickup sterling as well placed under my '93 F250 truck too.They bolt right up.




The other end of the tape is up against the other brake backing plate.Looks like I got 59 and possibly 3/16 between 'em.


Side note and probably useless info for here, but what I found was these 1st gen sterling's (pre '93) in this exact axle (the DRW pickup - these fat ones) offered the 3.55 gears (and 4.10's too) while the same axle in the 2nd gen ('93+) only offered 4.10's! Even though the "books" claim otherwise.Odd as this sounds,I'm 99.9999999% sure of it.
Trucks like Tom's above (the F350 cab and chassis that didn't have these "fat girls" that can't be used for dually pickup converts) still continued to offer 3.55 option too.
All it takes to use an early 1st gen in place of 2nd gen is a conversion u-joint and strap kit.
 
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Old Jan 18, 2020 | 11:34 AM
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yup, the cab chassis truck axles are narrower than than the dually pickup axles and as suck will not work on a pickup. just like a pickup axle will not work under a cab chassis truck.
 
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