Correct. My thinking is the hitch can be just as good as a blocker beam, probably better. The only fitment issue I recall was those extra plates it came with, I think they went on the top. They did say it was for F-series and wouldn't fit the excursion, but those were the only parts that didn't line up.
So, I left them out and the main part bolted on without issue. Considering the only thing I have ever used it for was hanging a ****** block to get a buddy's jeep out, and one of those extensions with a plate to stand on for climbing up on the engine. I don't think the missing parts will ever be missed.

I keep meaning to get the steel to fab up something like this,


Make it a bit wider and have the bends follow the bumper profile for a bit more bumper under the bumper I guess.

 

And why do you believe I haven't seen for myself?? I counter that I have , in fact, seen for myself numerous times, on several different rigs. Currently there are four solid axle 4x4's in my driveway, two Fords, one Dodge and one Jeep, and I've probably owned 25+ solid axle 4x4's over the decades (mostly Fords and Jeeps because that's what I like, but I've had a few Toyotas, Dodges and Chevrolets along the way too). But since this is the Excursion section, I'll keep everything Excursion related only.

For the Excursion I swapped a Dana 60 from an 04 SuperDuty under it because there are WAY more front diff locker selection /availability for Dana 60's than the Excursion's factory Dana 50.






Of course I wanted to go try out my new locker, and the during this timeframe everyone was complaining about "supply chain issues" so the replacement steering dampers didn't arrive until about three weeks after I got the Dana 60 installed. So I drove the Excursion around, even took it off-road a couple times to test out the locker and see if I needed to do any more fender trimming for tire clearance.

On smooth streets, no issues without the dampers (I do also have +2 caster shims under the springs though). Now driving down dirt roads / trails like this at 15-20 mph, there is a HUGE difference between having and not having a damper as every little rut or wash out will try to pull the steering wheel out of your hands and change your direction of travel. Yeah, you can slow down to like 5 mph and it won't be as bad, but trying to traverse 50 miles of this at 5 mph takes more time than I'm willing to invest.



And the same principle applies to any pot hole or road construction road irregularity you come across during your daily commute, and speed makes it worse. Hit a big pot hole at highway speed without a damper and the chances of losing control or unintentionally changing lanes and causing a crash is much higher.

And incase anyone was wondering just how wide open parts of west Texas can be and why one might need to drive down 50 miles of private, non-maintained, dirt road/ trails , here's an example.

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That was kind of my thinking as well.

Despite already having a built in front winch, I mounted a front receiver hitch, which serves as a blocker beam.



Better view below, with flow through vented lower valance.



The stock steering stabilizer shown above is the second OEM steering stabilizer... which currently leaks, just like the original OEM steering stabilizer that it replaced.

 

@Antonm23

As an aside, I like how your wooden workbenches are:

1. Modular
2. On casters
3. The casters "totally lock" in both swivel and roll with an over the wheel lever pedal
4. The intermediate shelf has a high / low bias, instead of dividing the vertical shelf space evenly.

Nice design.

 

lol, thanks. I may have been accused of overthinking things from time to time. Like those benches are 2' x 4' top surface area just so there would be no waste/ scraps left over when cutting the plywood, same goes for all the lumber used in the rest of them, only lumber wasted was in the form of sawdust. Spend WAY more time and effort than I ever should have planning /drawing those silly things, but lumber was just so freaking expensive when I build them (middle of Covid), that I didn't want to waste money on scraps.
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They instantly popped out of the photo (to me, anyway), and completely eclipsed anything else in the photo that you intended for us to look at.

I previously failed to list the fact that the benches can rotate 360° in a horizontal plane about their own axis without requiring the clearing away of anything else in the garage to do so.

And now that I think about it, they can all be rearranged 90° as a set, to accommodate projects where 4' bench depth is more favorable than a 2' bench depth.

Moreover, they can be moved to the center of the room, as a center table, with access on all sides, either individually, or in sets.

The reason why all of these observations jumped out at me is because I have designed (but have not built) similarly configured rolling tool box ensembles (using all metal) for service trucks with liftgates.

 

perhaps he meant stabilizer. But yea, the front SWAYBAR is needed. Otherwise you get too much steer with the rear and end up in a ditch. As far as a STABILIZER goes, it's useless on an excursion. If you are hitting something that "yanks the wheel" with a rig this size, there are other issues going on and your damper is simply trying to mask that. In fact, if it "yanks your wheel", that stabilizer won't do a dam thing because a damper is not meant to stop it from getting "yanked". It is meant to stabilize the wheel from going left to right and back again ad nauseum. If you are getting tank slap(motorcycle term), or woble(death), again, you got other issues. Nothing a damper will cure(only mask).

The damper is designed to stop the back and forth wobble movement that the tires might experience. This happens because physics dictate that two wheels front to back always want to be in line with eachother. It's lessened when you have 4 wheels, but really really noticeable when you are on two wheels and upset the ballance between the front and the back wheel. Hence there, it helps to avoid tank slapping the bike because it slows the force of the side to side motion of the wheel(it canxstill happen, but is reduced). On a car, it's not severe enough to warrent huge dampers, duals, etc. Do they do something on these rigs? Yea, they make the steering feel heavy, numb and terrible.

 

Not related to the thread topic, but I'm assuming there is a rod end /johnny joint of some kind at the axle end of track bar (red circled in pic below) allowing for the misalignment. Does this not bind/ limit articulation when the suspension articulates such that passenger side is in compression and the driver side is in droop? Or does something else limit articulation before that binds?

And are those legit birfeild joints? If so I'm jealous, always wanted a real set of birfields, just never could justify the cost as I really don't need them for my mild stuff (still want them, just don't really need them).


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So, just so I'm clear, you're saying that the oil inside the damper being forced through the piston's valving will not slow down a sudden steering movement? Because if that's what you're saying, then you need to go read about how shocks work some more.

Slowing/ controlling (or damping) road induced steering movement is literally the only thing a steering stabilizer does. Same way the shocks slow/ control how the suspension moves, a steering stabilizer does the same thing. If there is no force input (like when driving on a smooth flat road), then yeap, they aren't doing a darn thing at that moment (and nether are the suspension shock absorbers at that moment either), now go hit a pot hole, or any other road imperfection, and both start doing their doing job. Both make the driving experience easier, more comfortable ,and safer. Can you get down the road without them, sure you can, and so can a WW2 ****** jeep, but if you've ever tried to drive a CJ-2A at modern road speeds, well, you'll figure out pretty quick how much better stuff drives now.
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a bit off topic,
but I have a Piaggio MP3 with Independent front Suspension.

that thing can hit a pot hole with only one front wheel and ignore the fact, it just goes straight ahead....
I have owned a slew of Goldwings, from 84, 86, 94, 98, 00, 2002 which I gave to my son a couple years ago.

none of those 2 wheelers would survive the pot holes that the Piaggio MP3 can ignore






in my early 20's and 30's, I used to have Dirt Bikes that had long travel forks....
I would yank up on the handle bars, and let the rear wheel absorb the pot hole.

 

we will just have to disagree as my experience has shown otherwise. I'm just going to leave it at that, we can go back and forth for ever, but we will never progress

However...I am curious what you did for a locker? did you just do a truetrac or something else

I also like your rolling benches as Y2K Mentioned. I was planning on some things similar for my shed.

Lastly, I am curious on your dual shock setup...what's your reasoning?

 

Yep yep yep ah hah. RCV axle shafts. One of those staring at the freshly cleaned housing and deciding to just go for it situations. $2400ish at the time of the build, but bind-free steering in 4WD is so very worth it and I'm not getting younger to enjoy nice things.
Srly tight turning radius with none of that u-joint jerkin shakin poppin lockin going on.

The track bar end you have circled is a uniball cup turned down to fit and takes maybe 20 minutes to rebuild. Made by Baja customs, called the tracinator. I highly recommend it. If for nothing else, never messing with that balljoint or death wobble ever again.
All I can say about bind is that it hasn't happened yet. As far as I could stuff that side, it still had clearance. I might have a pic.
Baja Customs was on the forum at one time, they could give you the nitty gritty. https://bajacustoms.com/product/the-trac-inator/
As she is, the sway bar binds before anything else can get in trouble. I still haven't measured for limit straps so that's all for the best.

 

I have a True Trac in the rear differential , but for the front I just went with a lunchbox style locker. Which there are plenty of options for in the Dana 60, but nothing for the factory Dana 50. The Excursion isn't a dedicated off-roader (way to big and heavy for that). I might (probably won't, but I would like to anyway) go back and put some form of selectable locker in the front. But for now the lunchbox ( a USA made torq-locker, link below) works pretty good actually.

I have these same torq- locker lunchbox things in both ends of my Jeep JK as well (they were in the Jeep before the Excursion got one). Didn't want to spend big money on lockers for the JK because I figured we'd break the silly little front dana 30 ( often referred to as the dana turdy) and it'd get better lockers when the one ton axle swapped happened, so far the little Jeep axles / lunchbox lockers are hanging strong with 37's.

https://torqmasters.com/product/torq...-60-35-spline/



The dual front suspension shock setup on the Excursion was a mistake on my part. I wrongfully assumed the Cummins 6bt / NV4500 manual trans combo the Excursion has now would be significantly heavier than the 6.0/ 5r110 auto trans combo it replaced and would therefore need more shock to control. Turns out the weight difference is negligible as the 5r100 is a heavy beast of an automatic and the 6.0 isn't exactly a light weight itself. So the dual front suspension shock absorbers (I keep specifying suspension shock absorbers here because this thread is about steering dampers and don't want any confusion about which ones we're talking about this time) are really not needed in this case. I could take one off on each side , but I've already spent the money, and they're not hurting anything, so I just left them on.
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In the link to Baja customs you posted, they have that joint at center travel with the vehicle at ride height (see pic below copy/ pasted from your link), so the tab on the axle side must be welded on at matching angle to the track bar. Your picture the bolt/ joint appears to already be misaligned some at ride height, that's why I asked about possible binding during passenger side up travel/ driver side down travel situations.

Baja customs pic/ joint centered at ride height.


Below maybe not centered / already mid travel at ride height?. Hard to tell as camera angles can be tricky I suppose, but it appears as though the joint is already at mid travel with the vehicle at ride height as the bolt coming out the bottom looks way off center from the axle tab (again maybe an optical illusion, and just appear that way in the picture IDK). But if its working, then I guess it really doesn't matter much.



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I think you might be on to something there. It looks to me like their pic has a drop bracket and I don't.
Won't hurt to take a look at mine to recheck everything.