The Mighty Merc – Front Leaf Mounting

After getting the steering box in place, it was time to firm up where the front end wanted to live. It wound up being pushed farther forward than I would like it to be, and the high steer for the Tie Rod won’t work with the leafs in place, but that’s life.

The rear leaf mounts weren’t anything special and I got it right on the first try:

The front mounts went through several renditions. I eventually settled on using Ruff Stuff poly bushings (2.75” long x 9/16” sleeve) as I was having a heck of a time getting the rubber bushings to work out for me. So some time with the plasma cutter netted me these parts:

Burned together:

I also whipped up some 5” shackles:

And got everything in place:

And here’s how things look at ride height. The rear mounts is 4” ahead of the body mount (Yellow Line) and 2-1/4” down from the frame rail (Blue Line). The distance between the mounts is right at 44” (Red Line) and the front mount is 1-5/8” below the frame rail (Blue Line again). With the 5” shackles (Pink Line), that gives me a shackle angle of about 47° at ride height (leafs are nearly flat):

This is nearly the identical setup that was on The Lone Ranger and it rode and flexed very well. I still need to add bumpstops, shocks, and a track bar, but at least a large part of the project is now behind me now. So with it sitting on its own weight things look like this:

Which means my approach angle looks like this:

I thought it would look funny pushed forward 5” from stock, but I think after some trimming things will look fine!