steering box, will it work?

[zakt]

I have a 95 F350 steering box and pit man, thinking this might work on my 68 F250.... the pitman faces the rear so it can be moved more forward (inside frame, with crossover steering). Have seen some that have cut into the engine crossmember to fit a gear box. Anyone have thoughts on this..?? Maybe hit core support or steering shaft hit headers etc..etc..??

Todd

[averagef250]

That box is a good unit, but you will have a hard time mounting it.

[zakt]

what do you mean by hard time mounting i.e finding the right location or???

Todd

[averagef250]

The 1980 through 1998 F and E series box does not mount to a flat surface. You can do it, but you're not looking at anything close to a drill some holes and bolt it up situation. I was looking at putting one of these boxes in a highboy at one time and figured I'd machine some thick wall standoffs for the box to mount to and weld the standoffs inside the frame. It just did not work out though, too much cutting to make one fit when the 78-79 box fits so much better.

With that box, the crossmember is right in the way of where it needs to mount and you need to go to crossover steering or the 86-97 F-350 tie rod setup.

Why not make your life easy and combine the rear part of your frame with the front section from a 67-76 highboy frame and be done with it? I know how appealing it sounds to think about just changing a few things around and getting a 4x4, but there are lots of things to figure out and having seen lots of converted 4x4 Fords, I've never seen a good one and even had to revamp a half-*ssed one just to make it driveable and it still dogwalked down the road. The guy started with a truck that had been wrecked and didn't realize it. He dropped it off after he mounted the front axle for me to finish and, while his measurements were right, the frame and body were off.

To me atleast, making 4 cuts through two frames and two welds to put them back together is much, much easier than cobbling something together. Not saying that's for sure how it would be, but there's more work converting a 2wd frame to hang an axle from than there is to just cut the 2wd stuff off and replace the whole nine with 4x4 stuff. That and you get a finished product that actually looks like it came from the factory that way. Cobbled together steering parts and spring mounts is a surefire way to kill resale value of any truck.

[zakt]

Will be going crossover .. so was thinking it would move forward enough then to miss the engine crossmember. I have the whole frame part for the gear box cut out of a F350 so I would think I could weld that into the 68 frame at the proper location to get the gear box angle. I just dont care to have my gear box on the outside of the frame rail... (but might have to just exploring options ) Will have 38" tires on so how the drag link will fit across with the springs ...

Todd

research splicing frames also

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=25887