Now to the front axle. I found myself with a decision to make since I wanted heavy duty brakes and components but did not need a differential. So I decided on the F-250 four-wheel drive front axle housing with differential delete. The plan is to cut the ends off, machine the factory axle tube out of them, fit them onto my own steel pipe and weld into place.
I clamped the housing to the forks on my forklift and sort of positioned it in their right spot so that my harbor freight saw was able to come down and cut through the tube. There was no other way to get this onto the saw. I will admit that there was an incident involving gravity and this axle housing but I still have all my fingers so we're just going to leave it at that.
2022-06-19_02-08-32 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
Here you can see one of the ends fixtured on my Bridgeport. The goal was to only remove the factory tube and not at all enlarge the bore in the knuckle. Is it a knuckle? I honestly don't know what this particular piece is called. It's the c shaped thingy that gets welded on the axle tubes and all the rest of the bits bolt to it with ball joints.
So I got it on the Bridgeport and used an indexable cutter to basically plunge out four corners and chisel out the bits. But actually worked pretty well the first time around.
2022-06-19_02-09-30 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
2022-06-19_02-09-40 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
I took a lot of intensive measurements to figure out what width I needed to cut this tube to and got it to within about a quarter inch total of what I wanted. No complaints.
The downside is that it wasn't very round and needed a lot of sanding to bring it down close enough to the bore on these axle ends. From the factory they are pressed on and welded around the outside of the tube with about a 3/8 fill it weld. 10 mm for my overseas friends.
I was not comfortable welding on these since they are cast steel. Even though cast steel is fully weldable I don't have any experience with it and I don't want this to be my learning piece.
I was able to use a pipe sander to get the tube close enough that I was able to hammer the ends on. It was a tight enough fit that they easily stayed in position but a hammer was also able to rotate them a little bit. I needed each side to be at the same angle after all.
2022-06-19_02-09-52 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
2022-06-19_02-10-11 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
I was able to get each end hammered on and rotated to within .3° of each other.
2022-06-19_02-10-20 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
Once I had them on I used my TIG welder to tack the faces so that they stayed in place. That actually went so well I went fully around each face with the TIG welder. It was honestly some of the best beads I've ever had in steel in my life. I'm either getting better or the stars aligned. Possibly a bit of both.
Nobody around here wanted to weld it for liability reasons and I ended up at a hole in the wall machine shop about 2 hours from here that specialized in axle work and did a ton of work for guys in the pulling truck circuits. He came highly recommended. His wells are not what I would call amazing looking but they are 100% functional in my opinion. Totally worth $100 cash.
2022-06-19_02-10-38 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
Front brake caliper. Big.
2022-06-19_02-10-57 by
Kevin Ames, on Flickr
I have the truck more or less at the ride height that I would like to end up with and currently that means the front axle tube and the frame will share some space.
Right now the plan is to zee the frame over that front tube maybe about 6 in. I'm shooting for around 4 in of travel in each direction from static ride height.
I'll probably do that and add some suspension hoops for coilover shocks and springs. I'm thinking triangulated four link for the rear and a parallel four link with a panhard bar for the front if I have room.
Additionally I have to fit a steering box and the crossover steering mechanism that the f250s run.
Once I get a bell housing I can put my engine and transmission together and sort of hang them in place where I'd like them to be and start to see what hits what.
All the suspension stuff I think I'm just going to tack into place so that I can move things later on if I absolutely have to.
I probably also have adding a transmission tunnel to the floor in my future but that is an unknown until I can physically get a transmission hanging onto the frame.
More to come...
