What's up ladies and gents! Long time reader here on FTE, first time poster. This thread is meant to document my build of a 1973ish F100 SWB. She's sitting on a 1978 SWB F100 frame that has been fitted with a 2003 Crown Vic front member, as well as the 8.8 CV rear which is attached via a triangulated 4-link. The rear is on bags and the frame is notched. The skins are from the 73 era and painted a god awful, ****ty looking purple.... just the way I like it A 1991.5, and that .5 is critical, Cummins 5.9L 12-valve mated to the factory A518 pulls this sack down the road.

I've documented almost all of the build via pictures and a few vids (which will be uploaded to the TUBE). I'll slowly go through and post here, with commentary along the way. Hopefully I can help some fellow wrenchers along the way and answer some questions on Cummins swaps, Crown Vic Swaps, and anything else in between. I'll throw some pics up in a jiffy.

 

This was the start of it... well a few hours and beers down the road, but you get the point. Started with a frame, and went to town with the fire wrench. Also have a pic of the CV front and rears.

 

The demo of the OEM Ford Twin-I's was one of the most time consuming parts of this build. This was my first CV swap, so not knowing exactly where the front was spot welded/riveted/bolted/etc. equated into some inefficiency when cutting her loose. These front ends were not meant to be taken out, clearly!! It was welded in inconspicuous places, riveted, welded some more... holy crap! Took awhile but I got it out.

You may be wondering what the pipe welded across the top is for... that's to hold the rails in place once the cross-member was cut out. I welded that on prior to the demo.

Advice on this step of the swap: A torch/plasma cutter is your best friend. Take your time. Don't get too cut-happy and blow through the frame rails.

 

Ill be following this.. interested to see how the cummins weight works in the CV suspension.

Maybe more interested in seeing a cummins in a SWB 2wd.. one of the two

 

Thanks man! I went with new P71 coilover assemblies on the front. They have a super stiff spring rate so it holds the weight of the cummins nicely

 

I went ahead and stripped the CV front member down just to aid in maneuvering it... You don't have to do this step, but I'm a one man show, plus I planned on replacing just about every part anyways. These are few shots during mockup.

 

*impatiently waiting for more pictures*

 

I can't wait to see how this turns out!

 

Yup subscribed for sure!

 

So, I realized I didn't take many pictures during the whole process of putting the CV front in... BUT, I did film pretty much the whole thing and have posted most of the videos on my YouTube Channel.https://www.youtube.com/user/XCracer527

They are long, but show some of the work related to lining the CV member up, the pilot holes/alignment dowels, reinforcing the inner frame with crush tubes, and boxing the frame itself.

In these pictures, I've already completed the install, less the sway bar, and have replaced all of the wear items on the front end. I went with coil over/strut assemblies for the P71 Interceptor due to them having a very stiff spring-rate. The higher rate should compensate for the weight of the Cummins a little better than the average assemblies would. It is in the future plans to install a set of RideTech Air Struts, but they just didn't fit in the budget at the time. I also have the 8.8 rear in the background, but it's literally just sitting there holding the frame up for the picture. You may notice that all of the bracketry is gone... we'll get into that a bit later.

 

With the front done, time to move to the rear.

I bought Paul Horton's Triangulated 4-Link Kit, along with his Step Notch plates, to make life easier. This portion of the build involved a lot of metal fab and welding, which is my favorite part

The pictures speak for themselves. Along with the step notch, I took the liberty of boxing a large portion of the frame in front, and behind of, the notches. These areas see a lot of stress after notching, as moment forces are created with the void between the rails. This stiffened it up nicely. You dentside geeks will notice that I removed the rear cross-member that supports the gas tank... My plan is to run a poly fuel cell in the bed, so no need to reinstall it. However, you will see here in a few that I did put a cross member in between the notches....

 

There's that cross member I was referencing in the previous post! BEEFY. I had some 0.25" wall 2" OD pipe that had been laying around and figured that would do the trick

With the 4-link kit, install as rather easy as the brackets were already formed. They took some massaging with the angle grinder to adjust the fitment to the frame contour, but nothing crazy. You'll notice the 8.8 looks funny around the pumpkin... Well, that was me getting creative..aaand a little crazy. I built a truss around the pumpkin basically to create a mounting point for the inner arms of the 4-link. I could have welded them to the cast, but didn't want to go through the time and effort of proper metal prep, temperature control, blah blah blah, for a structural weld. Instead, I cleaned up the areas where the truss contacts the casting, laid some beads down, and then welded it to the axle tubes. This gave me the ability to get the angle I wanted with the inner arms and have a solid point to weld the brackets to.

 

Been away for a few days celebrating Merica!

Lets get back to it, shall we?

With the cross member burnt in, I began fabricating the bag mounts and the shock mounts. I cut everything out with a torch, so not plasma precision, but it turned out just fine for what I was after. The shocks, if you are wondering, are off of a 2014 RAM 2500 diesel. I put a leveling kit on the front of it a few months prior and had them laying around. Worked great! Bags are Firestones used on commercial trailers for semis... my Uncle works for a truck bodies fabricator and snatched a couple for me

 

With all of the fabrication work complete on the rolling chassis, it was time to hunt for a donor truck. I had been hunting for a couple months, perusing the likes of Craigslist and the Facebook for sale groups around my area. I knew what I wanted, a running driving 1st gen dodge D series with the 12 Valve cummins. I prefer the little VE rotary pumps because I can rebuild them myself with simple hand tools in an afternoon... P-pumps, though higher performance, are also a little more complex and often require to be taken to a pump shop. I also wanted intercooled, which limited me to 91.5-93 models. After searching for a little over 3 months, I ran across this beauty up in Akron, OH. A 91.5 Dodge D250 Diesel, Auto, LWB. The best part was she had recently been resealed with all new gaskets. The owner told me the cluster was not original, and that the truck only had 150k miles...cluster showed 254k. Either way, I checked it out, no leaks, ran great, drove wonderful, very very limited blow by (acceptable amount for these old mechanical engines), and the price was right, $2200!

As soon as I tugged it home, the tear down began! I took the motor, trans, intercooler, and radiator out first and began the mockup on the F100 frame. I wanted to be sure I had enough room to still run the mechanical fan, fit the radiator in, and not have to notch the firewall on the cab, all while matching my pinion angle in the rear of 3 degrees.... so after measuring a million and half times, I began to think of how I was going to do the motor mounts

I'm sure many of you have seen where guys take the factory motor mounts and flip them upside down when doing a CV swap... well, that was my first option. Luckily for me, it worked PERFECTLY The F100 frame originally housed a 300-six for anyone who was wondering... I tacked the upper side of the mounts on to the frame rails and then cut out two flat plates from 1/4" A36 plate for the bottom mounting surface. The bottom plates were drilled to allow them to be bolted to the aluminum CV crossmember. Then I welded the motor mounts to the bottom plates. Worked like a charm. In doing this, I was also cognizant of the steering hookup and how/where I would be routing the steering shaft, keep that in mind when doing this. For the rubber, I just simple re-used the rubber mounts off of the Cummins.

 

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the transmission crossmember process... It was a rather easy one though. I modified the original piece out of the Dodge and simply used it on the F100 frame. I opted to put it on the top of the rails. With the way the motor and trans was sitting, that location gave me the perfect angle without any major re-work of the crossmember, or requiring some janky spacer between the tranny and the member. I also had to notch the crossmember that the cab mounts to in the rear. This was to allow room for the driveshaft. I just took a piece of 6" pipe, halved it, and welded it in to create a C-notch.

With the motor and tranny sitting on solid mounts, I went ahead and pulled it back out and rolled the chassis out into the driveway for coating. I didn't get too fancy and have it sandblasted and all that... I took a wire wheel and cleaned off the surface rust. I opted for Duplicolor's version of Por15. It was cheaper and turned out to be just as effective!