And now the rear axle. This one was pretty straight forward.
Used 99-04 superduty B code leaf springs, and the superduty 4" blocks that came with them. Ne need for the overloads, as I have airbags instead, but you supposedly would want to use the OBS overloads.
And FYI, in 2008, they changed the rear shock arrangement, and made the leaf springs considerably longer, so those springs won't work.
To make the 99-04 super duty springs fit, I had to trim a little off of the shackle, and open up the bolt holes for the spring eye to 5/8".
Option 2: just buy a set of replacement shackles from a Super Duty (the route I should have gone since the bushings in the shackle were pretty toasted). They should bolt right in.
The older Sterling 10.25" sway bar (originally out of a 94 F250) bolts right in.
The 99-04 shock mounts clamp right to the axle tubes, and were located and welded in place - this was the only welding actually required in the whole axle swap, front and rear.
Bolted the 05-07 shocks in place.
Super Duty brake line is a 7/16" inverted flare. Stock hard line in the truck was 3/8"-24. Bought a brass adapter at the local parts store and bolted the brake lines together.
And the last snag in my project: the driveshaft. My truck originally had a Dana61, then I swapped in a 89 short pinion, then melted the short pinion down and installed a 94 long pinion Sterling 10.25". So combined with my Spicer 1350 flange yoke, the drive shaft should bolt right in...
The 08 Rear axle has a balancer mounted right on the pinion, just aft the companion flange. Combine the extra length required for the balancer and the companion flange / flange yoke, and the U-joint connecting the drive shaft to the rear axle ends up sitting about 1.125" forward of the Sterling 10.25" long pinion location. And of course, I didn't have enough clearance for that.
So my drive shaft is about 1" too long, and I have future plans of switching the BW1345 transfer case out for a married NP205, along with the big 1350/1410 drive shafts from a Super Duty shortened to fit. I took the easy way out. I shifted the axle back 1".
And forgot to mention in the front axle section: front drive shaft is now about 1.5" too long. Still need to shorten that one.
Last piece of the puzzle: parking brake.
The newer cables are tied together in a weird way. But I tore that apart and just bolted them in the original bracket, which works just fine, except they were too short to hook up to the stock cable. I saw other swaps where they attempted to extended the cables coming from the rear axle, but I used a different approach.
The long stud at the end of the cable turned out to be standard 5/16" thread, so I grabbed a 5/16" coupling nut, and a piece of 5/16" all-thread, and made it work:
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And this pick shows the 26" measurement from the center of the wheel to the fender lip for the rear axle:
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