i was curious if anyone has ever converted and 2wd f-150 into 4wd i have a 1986 4wd but the frame is cracked i have a line on a 1985 2wd but i dont know what is involved in converting any info would be helpful thanks

 

I have thought about doing the same to my 81 f100 but I looked in the owners manual the other day and it showed 4x4 on the other trucks but not on the f100 if anyone Knows if it is possible on the f100 I would like to Know. I would assume I use parts from a f150 and do what ever you suggest to 92nite, but is it even possible to have a 4x4 f100.

 

I just did a 86 F150 XLT Lariet over the last few weeks. I am still getting my notes together but here is my rough draft on what is involved. I haven't written about the tranny swap, cutting the hole for the shifter to the transfer case etc yet but here is the axle swap part............




Swap over is pretty straight forward. I spent as much time looking for the right size socket as I did doing the actual work.

Also, everything you hear about getting off the shock/spring buckets and leaf spring shackles is true. It is by far the hardest part of the whole project. I was so sick and tired of grinding and am about deaf from the air hammer and I could barely lift my arms by the time I was done.


For anyone wanting to do this project, I would highly recommend that you start the rivet removal process early and replace them with bolts on your truck so that you don't have to do twice as many when the time comes. Also, this will allow time to remove rust and paint so it can dry while working on the donor vehicle. I was surprised at how my rust free vehicle had rust trying to start behind the front shock buckets where the two pieces of metal came together at the frame. This area really needs to be treated before re-assembly.


Anyway, tricks I have learned from doing this.........

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After getting rid of all those darn rivots, they are replaced with 7/16 grade 8 Bolts and they fit perfect. Use Red thread lock on them as well. It helps stop them from rusting together later and will also keep them from vibrating loose.

It is much easier to take off the TTB pivots as soon as possible and leave the radius arms, shocks and springs hooked up otherwise they twist and get stuck. I wish I knew this when I was taking apart the donor vehicle. I didn't figure it out until I was taking my own truck apart and realized how much easier it went. Dropping the 2WD axle only took about an hour, the 4x4 was about 6 hours ( I have air tools, pressure washed everything first and then soaked it in breakfree ). Grinding the shock/spring buckets took about 6 hours. It was a REALLY big pain the rear.

I first took off the tires, then the sway bar, then the TTB attachment points at the engine support crossbrace, the brake lines, then the shocks, the radius arms, then the springs. Support each wheel when doing the shocks and radius arms, then lower and do the springs from the top 1/2 inch bolt.



Radius Arms are 29 MM nuts or an 1 1/8 will work


Bolts on TTB arms are 18mm while nuts on the back of them are 21mm

Sway bar has 18mm bolts with 15mm nuts on the back where it hooks to the frame. The nuts at the end links are 18mm.

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The spring tower attachments are 1/2 inch at the top retainer.
Lower spring “keeper” is 1 1/8 and a 12” plus two 6” extensions let you slip in there to get to it., put the 12” and one 6” in first to get clearance from wheel well then attach the last 6”.

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The pitman arm nut was 21mm and so were most of the other drag links nuts. 18mm and 21 mm were the two sockets I used most.



Brake lines were also painful. First it wants to leak from the caliper hookup line when you are first dropping the axle. I found that the plugs that come on a new fuel filter fit in that hole perfect to stop the leak. The bolt holding it on is 9/16. Then when you get the bucket dropped and need to take off the brake line at the hard line, it is a 7/16 fitting to a 5/8 fitting.

Easiest ways I found to remove rivets was two strategies..........

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...... grind the heads of the rivet until they were about 1/3 the original thickness, then I switched to the air hammer and chiseled the edges until it was cut. I then went back and ground on it one more time to get it completely flush. I then used a 1/4 punch and a 4 pound sledge to bang the rivets out. Slightly prying on the edges of the bucket helped to expose the lines of the rivet if they get lost in the grinding pattern. Some rivets came out in 5 whacks, others took hundreds and never did completely give only letting loose after all the others were removed and I pried the bucket loose. You will tear a hole in your hand as each rivet comes free and it pinches your pinky in the hole. I have as much blood on the ground as grease and oil now from each of the 12 rivets for each truck. -g- There are 6 rivets on each side, 4 on the outside and 2 on the bottom. I haven't put them back in yet but I bought 7/16 grade 8 bolts to put them back on as they looked about the same size. I will let you know if they worked or not shortly.

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.......Other method was to grind just enough to get a flat surface, punch a dent at exact center then drill a small hole first, I think it was a 5/32 or 5/16 drill bit. I had a “bullet tip” that really stayed on center nicely and went through it quick. Then I went up to a 7/17 drill bit and drilled it again. The first hole really lets the larger bit fly through it. After wards, take your punch and hammer and it comes out much easier. This method is better for working around the rear shackles next to the gas tank, takes less beating with the hammer though your arms get really tired of drilling.

Again the buckets and rear spring shackles are the hardest part. Some of the rivets stayed in the frame and the frame started bending before the rivets would let loose. I had to grind those off then soak them in breakfree and bang on them the next day to get them out.


It might be obvious to most but it wasn't to me, you must swap the sway bar, the brakes etc as the 4x4 was all heavier duty stuff. My old 2WD stuff was all in better shape so I was a bit disappointed and had to replace it all again. Still ti wasn’t high priced. The drag links were both about $50 and the tie rods ends were each $22.


*********The backs of the shock/spring buckets were very rusted and so was the frame behind there. It is such a pain to take these off I don't know if it is worth it or not but I am glad I did this project as I got a chance to stop this rust before it got out of hand. Note these are California trucks so there wasn't much rust at all on either of these so it was a shock to me to see rust here. I can only imagine what it must be like on trucks where it rains more than 4 times a year. If you are doing this, I would remove the truck buckets on the truck you plan on keeping very early on and then get a good rust stopper, clean it up really good with wire brush, course grit sand paper etc, then hit it with some POR-15 or Rust Bullet and do the same to the bracket itself from the donor to stop rust in this area dead. Letting you know this up front so you can plan ahead.


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The board rejected it for being too long so second half coming shortly.......

 

Part two of 2WD to 4x4 on a 86 f-150.......

The 7/16 grade 8 bolts were a perfect fit to replace the rivets you have to remove to swap the shock buckets. I put the bolt side out so the extra length wouldn't interfere with spring travel.

Easiest way to put everything back together was to just tack in the radius/trailing arms with just the big washer and nut, no back bushing. This holds everything in place for when you jack up each side.

Then you slowly jack the wheel up and slip in the spring and shocks. Attach those fully so they will hold things up. Two jacks are helpful so you can find a balance between the two sides to keep the springs and shocks from tilting in. I found this out the hard way. You don't need to jack the side you aren't working on all the way, just enough so that the shocks and spring will go up straight on the side you are trying to line up.

Repeat for the other side.

Hook up the pitman arm.

Now hook up the TTB attachment points. These are the hardest parts to get aligned. Just play with the two jacks and do a lot of wiggling and prying until you get the bolts in.

Connect the brakes. If you want to use that pain in the rear clip that holds the brake line to the back of the shock bucket, do it before you put the buckets in. I chose to cut it in two and make a push on clip out of it so I can change my brake lines later to longer stainless steel ones without fighting that stupid contraption.

Go back and put your bushings on the Radius arms and tighten everything up.

Throw the tires on and admire your work. You are almost done.

The sway bar is still left to do but is fairly easy. The old 2WD had a nice frame cross bracket with two holes. The 4x4 uses two brackets and each one has three holes. I just attached the sway bar to the links on the axle then swung the front up to see where it hit the frame and marked where the holes lined up and drilled those marks..

Also you have to drill some holes for the steering dampener mount.where it attaches to the crossmember. An easy three holes and it is pretty straight forward.

Now we swap the rear springs. You already pulled out all those rivets right????? Do you like rivets? OK, drill, bang, whatever your technique is, remove the spring shackle rivets.

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If you have the cash, I would buy new shackles from Ford for $38 each and save on having to remove rivets from the donor vehicle. It would cut your work in half and you would have nice shiny new brackets but that is just me. </FONT>


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These rear springs shackles, the ones behind the wheels are a real pain to get out since the wheels throw more gunk up in there so there is more rust and frozen rivets. Also there isn’t much room to swing a hammer so it harder to get the nice full swings you got when doing the front spring buckets.

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Rear leaf springs were 22mm and 24 mm bolts on the shackle to leaf bolts. Where the front shackle attaches to the frame, the top bolts are 5/8. Still haven't figured out a rhyme or reason to the mixing of socket sizes.

The rear shackle is the easiest of the two. Once you remove the head of the rivet, you can just beat the shackle off and then concentrate on getting the rivot out with repeated pounding.

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As for tricks, it seemed easiest when taking off the leaf springs to unbolt the u-bolts from the rear axle first so that nothing came flying off from strain then I took off the forward bolt at the shackle then the rear. Of course I had the body jacked way up so the stress was off the springs then watched carefully as I loosened the u-bolts to gauge if I needed to raise it or lower it to get the stress at neutral.


Anyway, for anyone wanting to try this, it isn't that bad. 2 1/2 days of work and I have a 4x4 front end now. Dual shocks instead of single and some automatic lift since the 4x4 spring towers have a spacer on them. The 33s fit in nice and only rubbed slightly on the radius arms. No problem I can adjust the stops but I am putting a lift in also so will hold off on that. I only plan on driving it enough to make sure everything works OK and to let things seat in before I tighten everything down again before I start the lift kit anyway.

Anyway, I was too busy to take too many pictures but when I download the camera, I will update my gallery with a couple.

For anyone wanting to do this project, I would highly recommend that you start the rivet removal process early and replace them with bolts on your truck so that you don't have to do twice as many when the time comes. Also, this will allow time to remove rust and paint so it can dry while working on the donor vehicle. I will go back at some future date and strip everything down then hit it with Rust Bullet.

Have I stressed that removing the rivets is the worst part of this job. I am learning to really really really hate rivets!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS - Removing rivets is a real pain. Have I mentioned that I hate rivets?

Thanks, I have been doing the drill a hole after I cut the head off trick but I still hit a few that are stubborn. The sawz-all helped for stuff that you are going to throw away like the old 2WD brackets and towers where you don’t care if you slightly cut into it. With the sawz-all you can take the rivet head off flush then drill it and you need less drilling this way.



Lee

 

Boy Lee, your a passionate ... It is very interesting and I will keep a copy of this post in my truck mechanical book !
I was sure it could be done but I wasn’t sure of the "costs" … like those rivets ! (that I hate too btw!) Tanks Lee !

 

Thank you for all of the info...I am beginning the same project and i will probably have a few questions.

thanks,

Adrian

 

No Problem, I check here often. Ask away.


You may want to start finding a drive shaft the right length. It took a long time to get mine cut and in hind sight I wish I would have just picked one up from a salvage yard. Mine is still about 1/2 inch too long and so I will be front wheel drive only again while they make a 3rd attempt to cut it right.

I still plan on posting some pictures but have just been too busy. The current project is covering the whole truck in Rust Bullet and then putting new paint on. I have it completely stripped down to bare metal and now just need to spray it. I take the bed off this weekend and then start spraying it hopefully and should have the Rust Bullet and paint portion done on the underside, between the cab and the bed and interior so I can put it back together.

I have to wait on the rest of it since it is best to paint it 48 hours after the rust bullet so I want to wait until I have plenty of time to do a good job on the body paint portion that will show. The sections mentioned above dont' show much so they just need to be the same basic color and well protected but not perfect shiny finish.

Good Luck,

Lee

 

Lee, did you do anything anything special to line up the rear axle with the front axle, or were you concerned about that?

 

Umm, why exactly did you swap the shock buckets and beam mounts?
To me the dual shock setup isn't worth dealing with those rivets and bleeding the brakes, but, I suppose if that floats your boat...
Last TIB to TTB swap I did took a whole 3 hours, without air tools.... unbolt the 2wd front end, bolt in the 4x4 one, and pray the alignment is close... LOL

 

82f100swb is right the 2wd and 4x4 f150 or 100 suspensions are so close it isnt funny sounds to me you did more work than you needed to i did one of these swaps for a friend of mine and spent more swapping the tranny and adding the transfer case than changing over the front ends and that included new ball joints if this were an f250 or 350 i would say good luck youll need it but f100-150s are very simple and staight forward anyway good luck and let us know how it turns out for you