Dean, you need to come out here and see this one. It looks like a factory effort. (even if I do say so myself.)LiftedAWDAstro wrote: My next design will have the fron converted to a 3 or 4 link with either coils and shocks or coilovers ($$). I think for about $1k the front can be slung with coils, shocks and a link type suspension. I am very seriously considering getting an AWD subframe, another D44 solid axle and doing the conversion. Then I would sell the subframe with axle, but I would make templates or drawings of all the brackets so I could do more swaps. I know there could be a few sold that way but I don't know if the time to fabricate would pay off in the end.
I used radius arms and Explorer towers with 1979 Ford F-150 Coils. We used another fabrication to extend the radius arms back to the stock crossmember's torsion bar holes and modified them.
I won't share the idea with many....(for patent reasons), but I would share it with you. It'll work out much cheaper than the 4 link, and just as snazzy, too.
There are manufacturers who now make a conversion radius arm kit for the Dana 60, too. It is two pieces. One welds directly to the axle tubes on each side of the truck, and the second part is a bolt-in piece, using bushings at the top and bottom where it meets the first piece, and a heim joint and bracket at the crossmember. If you loosen/remove the top bolt on the driver's side, you get mad flex. It's a dirivitive? of the "wristed" design.
I'll be fabricating my own bastard edition this winter for my new Super Duty front axle.