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Im just a backyard mechanic too man. I work without fancy lifts and ultra fancy tolls, and rely on some folks that I know to get some stuff done. I spend as much time in the driveway as I do in my new shop.

You do not want to run a spacer. The spacer is a pile of junk that is guaranteed to break a knuckle. The studs, now longer has to do double the job of the longer ones and with two surfaces that are trying to twist, it simply cant be done very well. It will loosten up and the knuckle will fail!
I actually have the dies from when I was having my cousin forge them for me. He runs some rather large hammers and makes forgings for the military. Since I had the ability to make the dies, and he had the rest, I started making steering arms. Forged arms were cool for a while but that fad sort of went away, and the machining cost was about as high as a one off piece anyway.
Im not in the market to sell my junk like I used to be, but one design did come from the old stuff and a raised forged arm is still available from :

http://www.offroadunlimited.com/orus...idproduct=8236

and these work just fine. They have all of the benifits that we discussed earlier and I have yet to see a failure here. They are not all that expensive and have decent hardware. These guys are good guys, I have been working with them for a while. They are down the road from me and have been a reasonable group.

Other one off stuff can be available, if you think that you need the giant arm, I may be able to help out here. PM me and we can discuss it further. No need to turn this into a swap meet.
To be honest Im about to make a run on some toyota arms. Yeah, not again, another toyota. I just cant stop. I think I have a 4x4 disease. I may have to attend some meetings, and get some help.......

 

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Hopefully this isn't TOO much of a hijack, but how thick are the leaves in the picture? I am doing a similar setup on my new project truck and am concerned about clearing the leaf pack.

Also, what is the standard king pin to TRE hole distance? Do they make a raised one that doesn't have any hole so the user can pick the length?

 

Thats no hijack at all Ted, its actually a very good question. I will have to measure the thickness of the spring pack but I can tell you that a dead flat arm clears a Super Duty 10 leaf spring pack. Ill get more accurate than that as soon as I can.

Many companies do make steering arms without a hole, but this is more so the end user can machine the hole to the appropriate size rather than select a desired length.
Being careful with lengths on these things is important. The longer the steering arm, the more distance the end has to travel to achieve a lock to lock turn. If it gets too long, and ot does not take much, it is possible that the steering box will reach its limit before the knuckles do. Then a shorter pitman arm is required, and the driver looses the advantage of leverage, more stress is placed upon the sector shaft and things start to get ugly.
Ill try to find a CAD file that has dimensions for this to better explain.

 

Ok its killing me. How on earth could you tell that was on a 2wd frame?

 

There are a few small details that the super trained eye can spot, and I am sure that he did, but the biggest, litteraly the biggest give away was the huge stock crossmember just over the axle.
This conversion uses huge leafs up front for a nice lift to clear 42's and you can see that clearance is still a possible issue. This brings up a real good point when 2wd to 4wd conversions are considered.

 

Lets see if this works:

Notice the x-member here, as well as the new frnt hanger section and hangers that are not factory 4wd. This is,,,,errr,,,,,was a 2wd truck not too long ago.

 

Yeah, I agree about the leverage, Ed. I was looking at using a stock TTB pitman-that's why I asked about the undrilled arms. The TTB pitman is shorter than a lot of them.

 

I too...have the 4x4 disease...with the specific strain...being 73-79 Ford Trucks!!!! LMAO

 

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FOR SURE!!! I know I need it...lol...I live, breathe and eat the 73-79 trucks!

 

Beautiful setup you've got there. Can I ask what width the Superduty spring are? Are they 3" wide like the stock springs? And did you make those U-bolt top plates?

 

Good info here guys. I'm just posting to subscribe in case something more gets added.

Hopefully I'll be figuring some of this stuff out soon as well.

Any update on locating a useable knuckle Ed?

 

Yes steve. I have yours and I am modifying the steering arm to have less lift since you wont be lifting yout truck as much nor will you be using such a large or thick lift spring.
I may just make a new one. I have some forged units, but I may machine one of the bling ones for you.
I will call you later, I put the boring bar through the housing, and while I think the axle tube is bent it might still work. Im just concerned about the seal keeping oil in the diff. Looks like this thing was hit on the driver side, or dropped or something.
Have a call into Dynatrac to see if my set-up is accurate and what the toloerances are. Pass side loks great but the driver side is about +/-.180" pushed back at the tube end.
Cant imagine the short tube having a bend, but Dynatrac says it can happen.
Still have some ideas, so call me when you have a chance.