Not your Average Dana 60 Swap

I'll start out with a little back story...

My truck is one of the few years of F350 that didn't come with a Dana 60 from the factory. I've wanted to straight axle it since I got it, but had a hard time swallowing the investment of a Dana 60 when the end result would be a truck that still drives and rides about the same as any of the 4 TTB trucks I have owned throughout the years. Ride quality can be improved with a leaf sprung Dana 60 with Super Duty leaf springs and a reverse shackle kit, but on a bull nose truck like mine, the front of the leaf springs just barely fit behind the front bumper. The RSK would move that 3" forward, requiring an aftermarket or custom front bumper, plus boxing in the front of the frame. Doable, but there must be a better option...
At the same time, I was tired of the rear drums. Yeah they stop well, but I got tired of having to jack up the ass end of my truck and adjust the drums every time I was going to tow my trailer.

So I started looking at different options; first I was investigating swapping in the axles from a 99-04 super duty. Much hatred of the unit bearings, but overall a bit beefier than the older Dana 60's, and the addition of rear discs. And they can be had pretty cheap. But I wasn't sure it was going to be worth the effort.

So then I started investigating the 05 and newer axles. Bigger brakes with discs all around, unit bearings are about 30% bigger than the previous version, improved turning radius, coil springs and radius arms on the front axle for a better ride....I was sold.

So I started hunting.

Ended up finding both front and rear axles out of a 2008 F350 for a good deal. But the catch was they came out of truck that had caught on fire; apparently all to common in the first year of the 6.4 powerstroke. All the hard parts were still good, but I knew I couldn't trust any of the rubber or plastic parts. It called for a full rebuild.

Then I found another front axle out of a 2010 that was bent for cheap. Ended up just the housing was bent, everything else was in good shape, so I pulled it apart, used the control arm bushings, unit bearings, and about $500 worth of parts from rock auto to rebuild the 2008 axle.

The rear axle only got partially disassembled, enough to check the status of all the seals, bearings, and brakes.

And while I had everything apart, I figured I might as well make everything pretty. Lots of elbow grease went into cleaning, wire wheeling, grinding, and painting.

So I'll spare everyone the details on the work I did to the axles, and start on what it takes to get them bolted into my truck.

Here's a few threads from other forums on the subject:

http://powerstrokearmy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9303&showall=1

http://powerstrokearmy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34782&showall=1

http://www.powerstroke.org/forum/94...scussion/203116-06-axle-swap-whole-story.html

These are all specific to 95-97 PSD trucks, but the frames are essentially the same back to my 84, so most everything still applies.

Had I to do my 89 crewcab again I'd of probably done the 05 up axle swap. I think ti would give best ride without a lot of hight. I don't like most of the RSK kits because I don't want the height.

Nice swap.

Hey what did you do for the pan hard bar? Custom or use a factory one?

Used the factory bar.

So this is right after I drug the 08 axles home:



Fast forward about 6 months, and after some fluffin' and buffin'...



Along the way I had to acquire some parts. The 08 axles came with steering linkage, track bar, spring buckets, and a set of control arms that some ******* removed with a port-o-band, so the control arms were unusable.

This left me needing all the pieces that attach the axle to the truck. Luckily, most of these parts are thrown away when a lift kit is installed on a 05+ truck.

Scored 05-07 control arms, track bar bracket, and factory Rancho shocks from one guy.

Then had a friend of a friend with a blown up rear axle in his 03 C&C Superduty. The junkyard sent him a standard rear axle; he stripped everything off the axle before realizing it was wrong, and the junkyard just left all of that stuff when they switched him out for the right axle. $50 later, I had some 99-04 B code rear springs, shock mounts, and bunch of other parts that I didn't have a use for.

Got some coil springs from the local junkyard; went with the AA code - 6000 pound rated coils

And the previously mentioned bent 2010 axle and a big pile of parts from Rock Auto.

I'm about to regurgitate a bunch of info, so someone correct me if I get anything wrong...

Changes to the 08 axles (compared to the 05-07 version)

In the front:

Spring buckets have an extra lump on the back side of them; saw one guy used a hole saw to remove it, I just ground them down.

Track bar is the same, but I believe the track bar mount is different. In 08 the frame changed shape to accommodate the new 6.4 Powerstroke.

In the rear:

The shock mounts are welded to the axle and incorporate the sway bar mounts. I cut them off. The 08 axle came with a spindly excuse for a sway bar: the old sway bar off of the Sterling 10.25 is twice the diameter, and bolts right on to the Sterling 10.5".

08+ has a balancer mounted directly on the pinion yoke; 99-07 have the balancer mounted on the driveshaft, just in front of the rearmost U-joint.

08 was the beginning of the fancy finned aluminum rear diff cover.

Most of the 99-07 axles have 3.73 gears. 4.10 and 4.30 were also available. Almost all of the 08+ axles I've seen have 3.55 gears. Ford's attempt to make their trucks more fuel efficient. My axles do indeed have the 3.55 gears.

Driveshaft info:

Almost all of the 99+ superdutys run 1350 U-joints in the front driveshaft, and 1410 U-joints in the rear driveshaft.
The few exceptions are some of the 99-04 trucks (and 99-05 Excursions) that had a 5.4 engine had 1350 U-joints all the way around. But the factory 1350 shafts don't work on the 05+ axles because the pilot diameter on the companion flange is the wrong size (found that one out the hard way).

08+ have a slip yoke on the rear output of the transfer case

99-07 have a fixed flange on the rear output of the transfer case.

And to go back even further....

95-97 PSD's had a BW4407 transfer case with a fixed flange on the rear output of the transfer case, 1350 U-joints on the rear drive shaft, 1330 U-joints on the front drive shaft

Not sure about the 94 changeover year.

92-93 trucks had a BW1356 transfer case with slip yoke, 1350 rear U-joints, 1330 front U-joints

Bricknose trucks were the same as the 92-93 truck if they had a ZF5, but I think the autos had 1330 U-joints in the rear shaft.

The slantnose trucks had one of three transfer cases- NP208, BW1356 slip yoke or BW1345 fixed yoke. They all had 1330 U-joints front and rear.

So why did I have to figure all of this out? The 05+ axles used 1410 joints only, with no factory way to link the rear axle to my 1330 drive shaft. The guys with the newer trucks (and 1350 series Ujoints) just run a 1350 to 1410 adapter U-joint. A 1330 to 1410 U-joint doesn't exist.

But I found a way. I don't know what it actually fits, but I found a flanged yoke that bolts up to the 05+ companion flange and accepts a 1350 series U-joint.



Sideways pic, but there's the Spicer 3-2-1859 yoke that solved my dilemma. Paid just a hair over $40 for it through Amazon.

This allowed me to use the U-joint I already had on the drive shaft: a standard parts store 1330 to 1350 U-joint (Napa/United 448) that I originally used when I swapped the original Dana 61 for a Sterling 10.25".

Keep in mind, the ******* Ford 1330 U-joint came in multiple sizes; they could have 1.0625" caps, 1.125" caps, or a combination of the two. At least they all had the same 3.625" cross dimension.

A standard 1350 Ujoint has the same 3.625" cross, but with bigger 1.188" caps.

A standard 1410 Ujoint shares the 1350's 1.188" caps but with a 4.188" cross.

Awesome thanks for the info. I'm thinking about trying to round up a 2005-2007 axle for my 93. I'd like the 3.73 gears. I've got a 92-97 ball joint dana 60 sitting for it. I'll probably sell that off and round up a 2005-2007 axle then.

Did you gain any height or stay pretty much factory?

Nice...thanks for info!

One last tidbit about the axle.

The unit bearings for the 05+ axles are about 30% bigger than their 99-04 predecessors, so they are way less failure prone, but also $$$$

Some of the guys with superduty axles have subscribed to the method of pulling the ABS sensor out of the unit bearing, and greasing the bearings.

Since I don't have ABS, the sensors went into the trash, and I made some 1/8" aluminum plates tapped for a zerk fitting. The zerks have 1/8" NPT threads, which fits nicely into the ABS hole to locate the plate and keep it in place. Bolted them up with a little RTV to seal them, and then proceeded to pump almost a 1/4 tube of grease into each unit bearing - and these unit bearings supposedly only had about 20k miles on them.

Quick list of the parts I used:

08 axles
08 steering linkage
08 coil spring buckets
AA code, 6000lb. front F350 coils
05-07 control arms
05-07 track bar mount
05-07 shocks
99-04 rear shock mounts
99-04 B code rear leaf springs
OBS F350 pitman arm - had to be reamed to fitter the bigger ball joint shank on the 08 drag link

All the super duty SRW trucks have a metric 8x170mm wheel bolt pattern. 05+ have wider axles (about 3") and require a different wheel offset, and the big brakes require a minimum 17" wheel.

So add wheels and tires to the above list as well. Stock superduty wheels are pretty easy to come by, ans I was due for tires anyway.

Found a set of stock 05 Lariat 18" wheels. The Lariat wheels are a 1 piece forged aluminum, vs. the more common trem-clad wheels: they're aluminum, but have a chromed plastic cover glued over them.

Last piece of the puzzle before I started the demolition process on the stock running gear.

The 05+ steering box is a bolt in upgrade, just requiring a custom pressure line.

I used my stock steering box (which actually came out of a 89 F250) along with switching to a 85.5-97 F350 pitman arm.
The pitman arm had to be reamed to fit the SuperDuty drag link. Buddy I work with happened to have the correct reamer, so I borrowed it and chucked the pitman arm up in my Dad's mill.

That darn 8x1780 bolt pattern is probably the only thing holding me back. It's convenient using the same size wheels and tires on two pickups and one trailer. But I really like that idea of the newer axles.

Now on to the actual swap:

First thing was deconstructing the stock front suspension. Everything was unbolted, then I had to take off the bump stops, and the rear springs hanger for the front leaf springs off. These were riveted on.

Then I spent 2 afternoons and no less than 2 gallons of Castrol Superclean (no exaggeration) to spray, scrape and brush the 30+ years of crap from the underside of the truck.

Then I wheeled this under the front end:



Got it situated where I wanted it (after lots of measuring), located the control arm brackets and coil spring buckets, pulled the axle back out of the way, and proceeded to bolt the brackets and buckets in place.

Driver's side coil bucket:



Passenger side coil bucket:



A few of you may have noticed I didn't include the brackets that connect the control arms to the frame in the prvious list of parts. I searched the junkyards, and only found 1 truck that had the front suspension removed for access to the brackets. The yard wanted 1/2 price of what they charge from ford, or about $120 a piece. Add to that they don't fit the older trucks all that well (the Super Duty frames have a slight downward curve where they bolt on, older trucks are straight requiring some shims), and I said screw that and made my own.

I took pictures after I bolted them on, but they're kinda crappy....



One I took this morning:



Then I wheeled the axle back under the truck, and started bolting the whole mess together.

Next up was the track bar.

Without the track bar connected, you have to use something to secure the axle side to side, because with only the control arm bushings keeping the axle in place, something like a strong gust of wind just might blow the dang thing over.

So I strapped the axle up with some motorcycle tie downs, and put the truck's weight on the front tires so I could locate the track bar mount. Some guys have made the Superduty track bar mount work, others have just fabbed and welded up their own. I got the 05-07 track bar mount I had to work. Only 2 of the 3 holes got used where it bolts to the engine cross member, and I had to cut a chunk out of it's middle to clear the pitman arm. Drilled a new hole in the frame for the front bolt, and was able to use an existing bolt for the new coil spring bucket on the back hole.

Also had to make a custom 1/4" aluminum spacer for under the front bolt. It can be seen in the following pic:



To get a nut on the backside of that front bolt - the one with the aluminum spacer under it - I had to pull the front bumper off.

One more thing to note on the track bar: it wanted to occupy the same space as the lip on the front of the engine cross member. So I fired up the Sawzall, and hacked about 3/4" off the front of that entire lip.

Since this required removing the power steering "cooler", I I threw it in the pile of old parts and went a different route:
I have a Champion radiator with the transmission cooler loop on the bottom. Since I have a manual trans, I routed the power steering return line through the transmission cooler loop. The stock mess of pretzeled hard line (the "cooler") would have still fit.

And a slightly different angle



See that big ass bolt on the end of the track bar? That bolt is supposed to be torqued to 420 ft.lbs.
I put a 2' pipe on the end of my 3/4" breaker bar, reefed on it until I felt my ass pucker, then went a little further, and called it good.

Brake lines...

I researched the hell out of this, then threw all that research out the window once I tore my truck apart.

According to the all knowing Internet, my truck should have had 10mm x 1.0 nuts where the hard lines connect to the front rubber brake lines, but it did not. Everything hard line wise on my truck was standard SAE. The nuts my truck actually had were 3/8"-24, which happens to be the same size as the Superduty rubber lines. But that happy coincidence didn't amount to anything, because the stock hard lines are about a foot and a half too short. Super Dutys run the hard lines to the front of the coil buckets; the hole where my stock lines came through the frame were pretty much entirely covered now by the coil buckets.

So I threw the stock hard lines in the scrap pile, and just made new ones. At this same time, I realized my stock proportioning valve wasn't stock. Appears to be an aftermarket replacement usually retrofitted to the older dent side trucks. Anyways, I tore the valve apart, discarded a proportioning valve and a residual valve out of it (basically just made a straight through connector out of it), and bolted it back in place.

In case anyone is confused by the proportioning valve, slant nose trucks didn't have the RABS valve, they had a proportioning valve in their place.

The SuperDutys have some kind of block mounted on a bracket to the front of the coil bucket to support the brake lines where the hard lines connect to the rubber lines. I didn't have these, so I whipped up some fancy aluminum pieces to clamp the ends of the rubber lines to the frame.

Here's an upside down pick of the driver's side bracket.

I think that does it for the front axle, so I'll leave you with one last pic.

New ride height: center of the hub to the fender lip is now about 24" (bad angle in the picture)



Anyone out there with a stock height F350 4x4 that could get this dimension front and rear for comparison's sake?