Did the 2011 full axle swap with new (2011) e brake cables 1 fit well the other was ~.5 too long maybe less swaged the proper size aluminum tube on at the equalizer bar where it goes from 2 to cable. Held up when testing on steep mountain driveways in neutral.

 

Solid! Got deets on those batteries? Where will you mount them?

 

Thanks for the info on the e-brake cables. I'll just have to see what I come up with.

The batteries are made from cheap cells, and a cheap BMS. I wish I built them differently, with the BMS inside, but I have a cover over the electrical, so it's not really a big deal. These mount in the camper in a location that is in the center of the bed, up against the cab.

Edit: the knuckle lights are also very cool, but I need to see beyond what that would allow.

 

How much were the cells and bms? I've thought about making some for my camper band wondered how much they were vs buying one already assembled.

 

BMS were $120 for both and the batteries were $1300 total for 16 of the 3.2V 302AH. This is a huge bank. I should be able to live and work in my camper for probably 2 weeks without recharging. The motivation for the bank that big was to be able to run AC, which I don't have yet.

To get something of similar capacity from someone like "litime" (also all Chinese) it would be $3k-4k and take up much more space.

Making them myself allowed me to size them perfectly for the space they needed. I also grouped them into two self contained batteries in case I need to pull one for repairs, or take it out for something else temporarily.

 

Most of camping I do is dry camping in my camper with generator and was looking at a setup that would run ac overnight without running generator. I just out on of the new furrion chill cube acs on it and it draws less then 900 watts wide open. Even has a 50 and 75% power limit for running off a battery/solar setup. So a decent inverter and battery setup like that should run it for a good while.

 

Is that Shell Ridge Road in Utah? Looks familiar.

 

I believe it's Burr Trail Rd in Grand Staircase-Escalante or Capitol Reef. I'm not familiar with Shell Ridge, where is it located?

 

I want to say near Kanab but it's been a decade. Looked a lot like that with rounded undulating ridges like a sea shell.

 

Finally got my '13 F350 springs installed. I had to make an extra long socket for the long ubolts, but I have a plan for those!



Designed and mounted my ditch light brackets. They lift the trailing edge of the hood ⅛" but it's quite hard to tell. I will probably tweak the design slightly.

 

Forgot I also stitched this steering wheel cover on.

 

When is the ride report?

 

I've only ridden empty around town to 40mph and it feels very similar. I'm expecting it to be much better at highway speed or when loaded. To be fair, it's been a couple week since I've driven it, so it's not truly back to back. Looking forward to getting a few more miles.

My old springs squeaked heavily with the camper, so I'm looking forward to that not being the case.... hopefully.

 

Happy to report that the ride is in fact better. I still haven't gone highway speeds or loaded the truck, but the front is definitely the end that crashes over bumps now.

Unfortunately the Barnes 4wd spring ubolt plates were not up to the task. They deformed quite heavily when torquing to the 185ft/lbs specified in the manual for the ubolts. After contacting Barnes they said I "way over torqued" them, and that their spec is only 150ftlbs. Of course, they do not specify that 150ftlbs anywhere.


Now I have to spend all that money on ubolts again to go back to stock. Part of using the OEM plates but the new spring pin hardware meant I needed to drill out the center hole. Luckily the 20mm bit I needed for the front spring perches gave me juuust enough clearance:


Next I mounted my ditch lights, but I still need to wire them.


Finally (and I don't know why I torture myself like this) I decided to design my own airbag setup. Initially this was because I wanted a cleaner set up than what is available to work with my 1108(?) B&W gooseneck hitch. Well while I was doing the longer springs I decided to just remove the hitch since I only use it to mount my camper, and I'm redesigning that whole setup anyway. Then I decided to remove the auxiliary springs and next thing you know nothing off the shelf will work the way I want it. So off we go! I wanted it outside of the frame, and to sit on top of the ubolts without a bunch of crazy mounting hardware. I also wanted a sleeve style bag as those are supposed to ride a lot better, with more travel than the normal firestone stuff. Finally I wanted to see if I could keep it mostly made in the USA, at least where it's possible. I ended up getting some "Universal Air" (yes, confusingly that is the company name) bags. Of course I was overthinking this for the future and wanted to be able to offroad without the risk of ripping my bags. Of course now I needed to design my own cradle system since the sleeve bags are not compatible with the standard cradles.

So far this is what I have. At "ride height" it will look roughly like this, but the bag will be more compressed.


When the axle articulates, the axle can pull away from the bag and look like this (minus the hardware hanging down in the center). The white puck is a piece of HDPE I "machined" to fit in the airbag cradle.

 

Interesting airbag setup. Like to see how this turns out. Seems like getting a B&W with airbags to fit together is always a bit of fab, and nothing really looks like that great of an option.