Well I have fallen victim to the horrible little unit-hub on my F-250. So instead of paying through the nose everytime these little pieces of junk go bad (I think they suck personally) me and my brother came up with what we think might be a good idea but it needs some quality input. Since the F-250's use a Dana 50 monobeam axle we were wondering if you could some how put the knuckles, spindles, bearings and what not off of the 50 IFS onto these straight axles? I know the older F-250's use an SAE size bolt pattern and the SuperDuty's use a metric one and this would cause a problem, but if it is possible, and I'm going to check tomorrow, if you can get the drive hub and rotor from DynaTrac (the company that already makes a kit to do this) if you couldn't use some of the older cheaper parts to make the conversion kit that they charge ya almost $3000 for. Sure you wouldn't have the 35 spline outers and Warn Premium hubs but if your like me you will never break the stock 50 IFS units.

 

There's alot to think about like the bearing on the axle and all those dimensions that have to be right on...I'm listening..

 

A few comments.....

If you want to use some of the Dyntrac parts I'd think you at least might have to use their knuckle.........it has 5 bolts as opposed to the stocker's 4 bolt:



When I called Dynatrac they wouldn't part out their SD combo to me......they'd only sell it to me complete.



There are people working on heavy duty fixed spindle hubs for the SD that should be available sometime in spring/summer of next year.......price won't be that bad either.

 

Well after a long talk with the people at Dynatrac I think my idea has been shot down. I haven't measured anything yet but even if the knuckles out of a 50 IFS would work I would have to use the SAE bolt pattern for the rims because it's just not economical to try to buy all the stuff to make it that 8 on 170MM metric pattern. The man at Dyantrac said that he would part out the kit for me if I really so desired but for the metric bolt pattern I would have to buy their rotor/hub assembly at $375 each. But that won't work on a stock spindle so you have to buy their spindle, $140 each. But that won't bolt up to any stock ford knuckle so you have to buy their knuckle $325 each. Then since they raised the position that the steering bolts on (as you can see above, thanks DCSpecial for the pictures) you wouldn't be able to use your stock tie rods, and you can't use theirs because theirs is designed to be used with a 6 inch lift. So in general that means what I thought was a good idea went down the hole fast. There is another way that we thought it might work, but you would have to change all your hubs over to the SAE bolt pattern, but if the knuckles off the 50IFS work, then you could put those on front and that would eliminate the unit-hub we all despise, then for the back on some of the later Ford E-350 vans they had the steriling 10.25 or vistion 10.5 in the back with disc brakes and the standard bolt pattern. Thats possibility number one. Or back in the day a friend of the family had a '97 F-350 4 door dually that had disc brakes in the rear so you might be able to get the outer hubs and everything you need off of an axle like that but that is if you could find another one, and if it had the right spacing and everything. So I guess I am off to Advanced auto parts (They offer a 1 year warranty on unit-hubs) to get another unit-hub.

 

Hmmm.....must of had more people call him wanting to part out the kit and decided he'd do it.




Like I said in the other post there are already people working on this......and have been testing the prototypes for some time now. Now, it's just a matter of working it out to get these items produced........but, earliest I'd expect to see them is spring/summer 2004......stay tuned.....