After putting a few miles on the truck, I was running into two problems 1)The rear settled down more than I liked 2)I had a “Death Sway” issue going on when I had any weight in the truck. While I liked how the Chevy leafs rode and flexed, they were just too soft for me. Since I don’t know the history of these leafs, its very possible that I managed to get an ‘extra broke in’ set of leafs. The…

After constructing the rear leaf mounts (Linky) it was time to get them located correctly and add some gusseting. From the above mentioned thread, I’ve already welded up the hangers by using some ¼” plate to tie things together and set my standoff distance (1.5” from the frame, same as the stock hangers): For the gussets, I added two on top, and one in the front: And one more tying in the rear To locate these mounts, I butted them…

After farting around trying to figure out how to make everything live in harmony (body mounts and leaf mounts) it turns out I had a bit of luck. Just this past week, we got our Torchmate running at work. Since I got to help set it up I made up a few “test pieces” that were identical to the front leaf mounts I used. At the time I wasn’t sure that I could use them or not, but I figured…

For the rear, I decided to ditch the standard Ford springs and go with the Chevy 1500 rear leaf pack. These are a cheap way to lift the rear 3” when left in the stock location. Not that it matters since I’m moving everything around anyway.

My main goals for the rear axle were to: 1) Be a full floater 2) Have disc brakes 3) Common enough to find gears/lockers for it So that narrowed the field down to the 14 bolt, Sterling, and rear 60 axles. All of these have their strengths and weaknesses. The big selling point for all of them is that they’re cheap and plentiful and more than strong enough to handle a lighter rig. The draw back to the 14 bolt/Sterling’s…