I have been amassing parts for my truck over the past few months. I decided that right now it would be easier for me to get custom suspension's "softride" front leaf springs, instead of building a ford style radius arm setup. They seem to be designed like the super duties leaf spring, with only two leafs that taper thickness from the center out. http://www.customsuspension.com/store/p ... ts_id=1861
I also decided that it would be a good time to do crossover steering in conjunction with a borgson double u joint steering shaft. There is a little bit of information from the people that have done crossover steering
My parts list for the drag link include:
double ended adjustor
4 tie rod ends
PSC passenger side high steer arm
5' 1 3/8" x 3/16" wall DOM
left hand thread weld in bung for TRE
WJ jeep grand cherokee pitman arm with the alignment key removed and reamed for "chevy 1 ton" taper
With she shocks, I decided to go with a 10" travel shock from Fox. The main reason for the 10" travel ones is because they were in stock and there was no eta on the 8" ones. Factory has a travel of 8.5", my biggest concern was to maintain the factory shock mount/ bump stop bracket. I machined the lower mount to receive the 1/2" shock eyelet, on the frame side I cut the old stud off, drilled it out and welded a grade 8 bolt to the bracket.
The gap between the bump stop and leaf spring measures 3 3/8", there is 3 3/4" of shaft showing on the shock. They do have a rubber bumper on the shaft, from the shock body to that number is 3 1/4". I was worried about the shocks bottoming out during normal use, but after a week of driving around I can tell that there shouldn't be an issue with bottoming them out. Once I get a eta on the 8" travel ones I may purchase a set of those and use the 10" ones on my rock crawler.
This is the best picture that I have of the change in height. The hub center to fender measured 21 1/2" on the drivers side and 22" on the passenger side. After the springs were installed that went up to 24 1/4" on both sides, that number was static and not been drove yet it may have changed.
My tire used to rub the fender with the wheel turned to the drivers side.