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The option and stress relief is worth the 2nd vehicle.
Yes for sure! I use the truck as my daily and my wife drives a Honda, having a second vehicle is a major stress reliever! I couldn’t do this now without two vehicles especially now with fuel prices it’s nice to take a car on a trip and save a wad on fuel!
Alright got the shackles and brackets on!
The front bracket slipped right in and bolted up without any problem, I was a little concerned that the holes might not align from one frame horn to the next but it was perfect!
To find the location of the rear brackets is a bit of a thinking process that will more than likely be different for each truck.
First the“Low-Pro” rear bracket holes are 1” forward and 1” higher than stock to get the correct angle of the shackles.
I liked the angle here, it’s not quite as offset as I would like but after the springs settle in I’m pretty sure they will fold back a bit more.
Sky recommends having a total of 1-1/2” offset from plumb. So you have to take the length of the leaf spring, minus 1-1/2 inches and that is where the bracket hole should be.
For example my leaf springs were 56” springs (under load) so I measured from the front bracket spring hole center to the rear bracket spring hole center and moved my rear bracket till it was centered on 54-1/2”
It would be best to only drill two or three holes and then mount the spring and put the weight of the truck on them to ensure the correct shackle angle.
Now this process is much easier on an existing 4x4 truck because Sky made the brackets to bolt right where the stock brackets were so that there is no measuring required but in this case they need to be measured.
It helps to have a clamp to hold the bracket as you measure and drill the first few holes.
I clamped the bracket to the frame and drilled the bottom two holes, snugged those bolts then drilled the rest. So that the bracket is tight to the bottom of the frame.
There are a set of bolts (bottom and side bolts) that are a pain to install, you have to trim the bottom bolt to get the side bolt to thread.
The top hole in the pocket of the body mount bracket is a blind guess, I did pretty good, I couldn’t figure how to get a good straight hole without grinding the rivets off the cab mount bracket and remounting it after drilling, which was out of the question for me.
I bolted the sway bar end link brackets to the frame, there is one hole that aligns correctly but the other two have to be drilled, the holes are 2-3/8 inch center to center the third hole up on the side of the frame is another blind guess.
I do not have extend end-links, the truck should only be 2” taller than a stock 4x4 F350 and they seem good to me.
Sway bar went in without a problem.
The track bar bracket location was determined by bolting the track bar to the axle and clamping the bracket to the the cradle with the track bar halfway extended. Two of the three holes were no problem but the third was right up again the oil pan. Still not sure if I am going to weld it or try and slip a bolt in there, but I don’t want it rubbing on the oil pan!
I set everything down on the tires and cycled the suspension a little, everything looks great!
The stud/hole on the tire and the stud/hole on the hub did not align so I cut off the stud on the wheels! Seems drastic but the hole on the wheel has a stud through it, so whoopdie-do!
Well it was time to put the brakes on! But I soon realized that the dust shields that I beat to hadies when pulling the spindle off was actually needed. There’s not enough room to put the brakes on without that dang dust shield in there!
It’s beat to death and I would call it unrepairable so I am going to take some measurements and get some grade 8 washers to throw in there instead.
Anyone think of why that wouldn’t work?
I think I found some from Bronco Grave Yard but they’re 80-90$ a piece!
I would think that having solid washers in there is just as good as some aluminum foil plate in there! But I’m no Dana scientist!
I can’t think of any other reason why the brakes wouldn’t go on?
Are you 100% sure the dust shields actually do go between the knuckles and the caliper brackets? I used to do work on a few late OBS 350s and never noticed that, my own 350 even tho it runs Superduty axles still uses late OBS calipers and the shields go around the brackets but never touch the mounts for them on the knuckles. Same with every other similar truck or van brake I've ever worked on, Ford or GM or Dodge, they always mount the caliper bracket/bridge straight against the knuckle, no sheetmetal anything sandwiched between them.
I think your issue comes from the stainless pad clips touching on the rotor braking surfaces. Investigate there, maybe you got incorrect clips?
Edit: look at this, see how it ends before the brake mounts?
Are you 100% sure the dust shields actually do go between the knuckles and the caliper brackets?/
Yeah, so it gets sandwiched between the knuckle and the spindle, turns out that’s not what the problem was for me, still figuring it out completely but I’ve almost got it… I’ll post a full report when I am sure lol
Crummy picture but that’s a shot from the back side…
Consensus is that the dust shields don’t do a whole lot and some folks remove them, I’ve only ever heard of one guy who had his u joints bind at full tilt without the dust shield. Mine didn’t bind and so I left them off.
That is really awesome work. The detail and pictures are awesome!
I have SD knuckles, so naturally a SD dust shield. Can't tell you how many times I mounted it backwards and then had to pull everything off to flip it. Super annoying.
Alright! So my whole brake problem was all the rotors! Thanks to a good friend, who has done this before, he was able to point me in the right direction!
The dust shield on or off didn’t make a difference. I pulled the races and bearings from both the SRW hub and DRW hub and all part numbers matched up.
I then measured from the inner race seat to a strait edge atop the rotor..
And so found that they were different, I pounded the rotors off and swapped them out, the SRW rotor did not have a “cup” that would hold the bolt heads centered on the rotor but they did center very well on the hub and was good enough for me.
So my thoughts are that because the hubs came from a Cab and Chassis truck and I know that the frames are narrower on them and so maybe the rotors needed to be different for that reason? idk but beware to anyone buying hubs off a C&C truck that you may have to change the rotors!
So now that's all cleaned up I can move forward!
Check out this massive fracture on this rotor! Anyone seen anything like that?
The panhard/Trackbar went on nice and easy, the bar doesn’t come with hardware so I got 9/16x3.5” grade 8 bolts to secure it. I placed the trackbar bracket where the adjustable bar is halfway between fully extended and fully retracted. I’ll hang a string across the hood with a plumb-bob off each end to adjust it exactly.
The shocks went in without any problems, pretty straightforward.
Got some reman calipers from O’reilys to tide me over till I can do some more detailed work with the hubs, rotors etc.
Wheels are on and ready for an alignment!
I have a few more things I need to touch up on the front end as far as paint and grinding some rivets down but that shouldn’t take long.
I’ll start on the rear end tomorrow, that should be very simple!
You can see in this picture that the sway bar is a little too close to the leaf spring for my liking so I may get some extensions after all, I’ll flex the suspension a little and make sure but I think in extreme situations it may bind.
Set the rear on blocks and emptied a bottle of PB Blaster on all the hardware that has to come off.
I have a whole new sway bar from the donor truck that I have painted. I needed extended end links and was going to put new bushings in so I just figure I might as well put in a freshly painted bar!
I’ll disconnect the brakes, shocks and sway bar first than lll go to the U-bolts and lower the axle for the new blocks.
I have the stock blocks that came off the donor but I also have some 6 inch blocks from another project that I may end up putting in there. I doubt the stock u bolts will work with 6” blocks but we’ll see! If the truck isn’t going to be level then I’d rather the rear be higher than the front that way I have to option to add some shims up front for the day I acquire some wheels that’ll allow 35” tires. 👍🏻
