Kiliona
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- July 12, 2013
- Messages
- 213
- Reaction score
- 43
- City, State
- Idaho
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 1992 Ford Explorer XLT
It's been a hot minute since an update, so here we go! Sometimes fabrication just takes a lot longer then you expect it to... but... my explorer now has a dana 50 under the front end! At least, mostly.
So as a recap I grabbed an 8 lug TTB dana 50 out of an F250 in a junkyard. The first issue to overcome was the fact that these axles came with leaf's not coils, so I needed to mount the coil seats onto the dana 50. I did this by welding the stud from the dana 35 onto the 50. It might have been better to find a way to bolt it, however the dana 50 arms aren't as tall as the 35 so there isn't really enough height to have the full stud sticking in there without it hitting the axle shaft I had to cut the stud down. Welding was the best option, and by my second try I even managed to put the stud on the right side of the axle! . This part was easier then I expected it to be for sure.
Now I could bolt the coil springs on, but I needed to be able to bolt the dana 50 to the chassis. First thing was first - to make it easier, I flipped my chassis upside down so I could get at where it needed to be welded easier (this is partially to blame for how I managed to weld the studs on upside down the first time). One interesting thing to note is that I needed to move the pivot brackets about 3" towards the front of the car to make the dana 50 sit in the right spot, that was a surprise. Here is the before and after on the passenger side mount.
The good thing about this is that it meant I was able to get this bracket out of the way of where the 6BT oil pan will sit without changing the wheelbase of the car, so silver linings haha. I had to cutout part of the front of the engine crossmember to get the pumpking to fit on the drivers side, here it is mocked up to test the clearance and such (it received a bit more plating after this point, and don't worry about the axle shaft depth this was just a mockup).
After some plating and a lot more welding, here's the finished product! A dana 50 under a ford explorer. The 8 lugs on an explorer are beautiful .
Now it needs radius arms. I decided to go with a the linkage type I described in an earlier post rather then simply remaking the stock design. Technically what I'm building is a parallelogram type linkage, one of the simplest linkages you can get. With my design the caster will not change as the suspension cycles which should significantly improve the dynamics of the suspension and help to eliminate a few of the issues people have with TTB. Here is what I'm going for. On the left is essentially the stock setup, on the right is my design. Again see post above for more discussion on this:
I went with heim joints and 36" long links. I was able to get all the materials for this for less then $200 on Mcmaster (could of probably saved even more getting the tubing at a metal yard). Using these longer arms will result in ~1.4" of front to back movement of the axle for every 10" of suspension travel (rather then the stock 2.7"+). The length of the dana 50 arms will result in a joint offset of at most 7 degrees which is well within the ability of heim's to meet. Note all these numbers are IIRC, I did this calculation a few weeks ago and the napkin I wrote them on wasn't the cleanest .
I started out by tig welding up some linkages. I'm using a left hand thread heim on one side and a right hand on the other which will give me a couple inches of adjustability front to back on the car without having to remove the linkages as well as allowing me to do a base caster setting through the linkage - should make getting the TTB alignment done much easier. Additionally ride height will no longer affect caster so that will also make aligning it easier.
I then took some 1/4" angle iron that had been lying in my parents driveway for a decade and made some brackets to mount the links on. The side that mounts on the axle is clearanced for the spring and for the jam nuts, the frame side is about 1/4" taller to help the heims and tubes clear the frame. Left side is the axle side, right side is the frame.
Tig had been getting expensive, and I wasn't kidding about where I found the angle iron so the metal was pretty dirty which isn't very tig friendly, so this was my first real foray into stick welding. Next was to stick weld the axle bracket on.
Next in order to get the tubes to fit at full bump stop I had to clearance the body mounts. Here's the before and after.
After this I attempted to weld the frame side mounts on, but had to give in. Overhead stick welds are hard, and this one was above my ability. Luckily my GF was trained as a pipe welder so rather then having to flip the frame over again I got her to come in and weld it. While she was at it we added a plate on the back.
You might be thinking that the bracket removes a lot of ground clearance, and you'd be right. However it's "only" about 5 1/2" which isn't too much more then the leaf spring mounts anyways. That's what the plate on the back is for is I'm hoping with it I MIGHT have a fighting chance to back over a rock with it if I ever needed to but it might be wishful thinking. the reason the mounts are on the bottom of the frame and not the side is that I would have had to completely remove the body mount I clearanced earlier to position the link bracket any higher. If these brackets get in my way too much I can always cut them off and move them, but for now I wanted to avoid having to reposition the body mount.
Here's the finished and painted product! Note the coil spring is removed in this picture so I could set the axle at full bump stop. It's tight but the links and differential are all clearing at full stop (however I SHOULD move the bump stop over a touch, it isn't exactly in the right spot).
Here it is with springs installed
The front definitely took a lot longer then I wanted it to, and there's still some things that need done on it. For example, steering, brakes, and shocks. I haven't welded on a stud for the shock mount yet since I plan on using the 2" lift springs and shocks that are on my green explorer. I still need to find a place to work on the green one and pull the suspension out of it so I won't know how high exactly to put the shock mount until I get the shocks and springs home to test it with.
Next will likely be the rear end which should be much easier then the front. I'll be using the dana 70 out of the ram (same 8 lug pattern as the front) and I won't be going crazy, no 4 link setup or anything "yet" so it should be much simpler. After that I need to do some boxing on the frame, get the drivetrain mounts fabricated up, clutch and gaskets, driveshafts, body back on, burnouts, then figure out all the small stuff like gauges exhaust and fenders . Still a lot of work to do, but it is coming along!
As always if you prefer a vlog to a blog, then here's installing the pivot brackets and coil spring perches in video format:
Swapping Leaf's to coils? 4x4 Axle FABRICATION! - YouTube
and here's the new "radius arms" in video format:
Fixing Everything That's WRONG With a TTB Front Axle! - YouTube
So as a recap I grabbed an 8 lug TTB dana 50 out of an F250 in a junkyard. The first issue to overcome was the fact that these axles came with leaf's not coils, so I needed to mount the coil seats onto the dana 50. I did this by welding the stud from the dana 35 onto the 50. It might have been better to find a way to bolt it, however the dana 50 arms aren't as tall as the 35 so there isn't really enough height to have the full stud sticking in there without it hitting the axle shaft I had to cut the stud down. Welding was the best option, and by my second try I even managed to put the stud on the right side of the axle! . This part was easier then I expected it to be for sure.
Now I could bolt the coil springs on, but I needed to be able to bolt the dana 50 to the chassis. First thing was first - to make it easier, I flipped my chassis upside down so I could get at where it needed to be welded easier (this is partially to blame for how I managed to weld the studs on upside down the first time). One interesting thing to note is that I needed to move the pivot brackets about 3" towards the front of the car to make the dana 50 sit in the right spot, that was a surprise. Here is the before and after on the passenger side mount.
The good thing about this is that it meant I was able to get this bracket out of the way of where the 6BT oil pan will sit without changing the wheelbase of the car, so silver linings haha. I had to cutout part of the front of the engine crossmember to get the pumpking to fit on the drivers side, here it is mocked up to test the clearance and such (it received a bit more plating after this point, and don't worry about the axle shaft depth this was just a mockup).
After some plating and a lot more welding, here's the finished product! A dana 50 under a ford explorer. The 8 lugs on an explorer are beautiful .
Now it needs radius arms. I decided to go with a the linkage type I described in an earlier post rather then simply remaking the stock design. Technically what I'm building is a parallelogram type linkage, one of the simplest linkages you can get. With my design the caster will not change as the suspension cycles which should significantly improve the dynamics of the suspension and help to eliminate a few of the issues people have with TTB. Here is what I'm going for. On the left is essentially the stock setup, on the right is my design. Again see post above for more discussion on this:
I went with heim joints and 36" long links. I was able to get all the materials for this for less then $200 on Mcmaster (could of probably saved even more getting the tubing at a metal yard). Using these longer arms will result in ~1.4" of front to back movement of the axle for every 10" of suspension travel (rather then the stock 2.7"+). The length of the dana 50 arms will result in a joint offset of at most 7 degrees which is well within the ability of heim's to meet. Note all these numbers are IIRC, I did this calculation a few weeks ago and the napkin I wrote them on wasn't the cleanest .
I started out by tig welding up some linkages. I'm using a left hand thread heim on one side and a right hand on the other which will give me a couple inches of adjustability front to back on the car without having to remove the linkages as well as allowing me to do a base caster setting through the linkage - should make getting the TTB alignment done much easier. Additionally ride height will no longer affect caster so that will also make aligning it easier.
I then took some 1/4" angle iron that had been lying in my parents driveway for a decade and made some brackets to mount the links on. The side that mounts on the axle is clearanced for the spring and for the jam nuts, the frame side is about 1/4" taller to help the heims and tubes clear the frame. Left side is the axle side, right side is the frame.
Tig had been getting expensive, and I wasn't kidding about where I found the angle iron so the metal was pretty dirty which isn't very tig friendly, so this was my first real foray into stick welding. Next was to stick weld the axle bracket on.
Next in order to get the tubes to fit at full bump stop I had to clearance the body mounts. Here's the before and after.
After this I attempted to weld the frame side mounts on, but had to give in. Overhead stick welds are hard, and this one was above my ability. Luckily my GF was trained as a pipe welder so rather then having to flip the frame over again I got her to come in and weld it. While she was at it we added a plate on the back.
You might be thinking that the bracket removes a lot of ground clearance, and you'd be right. However it's "only" about 5 1/2" which isn't too much more then the leaf spring mounts anyways. That's what the plate on the back is for is I'm hoping with it I MIGHT have a fighting chance to back over a rock with it if I ever needed to but it might be wishful thinking. the reason the mounts are on the bottom of the frame and not the side is that I would have had to completely remove the body mount I clearanced earlier to position the link bracket any higher. If these brackets get in my way too much I can always cut them off and move them, but for now I wanted to avoid having to reposition the body mount.
Here's the finished and painted product! Note the coil spring is removed in this picture so I could set the axle at full bump stop. It's tight but the links and differential are all clearing at full stop (however I SHOULD move the bump stop over a touch, it isn't exactly in the right spot).
Here it is with springs installed
The front definitely took a lot longer then I wanted it to, and there's still some things that need done on it. For example, steering, brakes, and shocks. I haven't welded on a stud for the shock mount yet since I plan on using the 2" lift springs and shocks that are on my green explorer. I still need to find a place to work on the green one and pull the suspension out of it so I won't know how high exactly to put the shock mount until I get the shocks and springs home to test it with.
Next will likely be the rear end which should be much easier then the front. I'll be using the dana 70 out of the ram (same 8 lug pattern as the front) and I won't be going crazy, no 4 link setup or anything "yet" so it should be much simpler. After that I need to do some boxing on the frame, get the drivetrain mounts fabricated up, clutch and gaskets, driveshafts, body back on, burnouts, then figure out all the small stuff like gauges exhaust and fenders . Still a lot of work to do, but it is coming along!
As always if you prefer a vlog to a blog, then here's installing the pivot brackets and coil spring perches in video format:
Swapping Leaf's to coils? 4x4 Axle FABRICATION! - YouTube
and here's the new "radius arms" in video format:
Fixing Everything That's WRONG With a TTB Front Axle! - YouTube