Front Suspension, Steering, a Dana 60, and a Bumper.

I took on a large project with a short time frame, again. I had recently bought a fairly nice, and driveable, '85 Dodge W350 crew cab for 5 bills, and it had a Dana 60 front axle. That meant that all I had to do was swap out the Dana 44 for the new Dana 60, except I always like to make things more difficult it seems.

A Dana 60 swap is a fairly straight forward, and simple task. The job would require a little time, new u-bolts, a 1-ton master cylinder/proportioning valve, and a shortened front driveshaft. However, I also had a hydraulic ram for ram assist steering, and it seemed like a great time to upgrade the front springs for a flexier set I thought I could build from springs I already had. To install the ram assist steering I'd need to drill and tap the steering box, but the box the was currently on the truck wouldn't work with a future crossover steering setup. Well, since I'd rather only drill and tap one box, I also felt this was the best time to upgrade to crossover steering. Those more flexible front springs would probably require it anyways. Oh yeah, and with crossover, I'de need a new steering shaft since the box gets repositioned, it needed a new shaft anyways. You can see where this was headed. One more thing, I'd had this brand new Mile Marker 12000E winch on the garage floor for way too long, I really needed to build a bumper for it.

After dismantling the front end, I could easily see that new frame shackle bushings were needed. But stock Dodge bushings are only 1" in diameter. So I took a page from PJTPW and built new bushing mounts and used 1.5" polyurethane bushings that should last a very long time, and still flex very well.

The shackle bushing mounts are offset outward slightly so that the shackles would clear the heads of the 1/2" grade 8 bolts that were used to install the new shackle mount. I then discovered that the inside shackle leg would rub the inside lip of the frame channel, so I built this set of 6" shackles with built-in spacers that would, not only aid the shackle in clearing the frame channel on the inside, but would offset the end of the spring back to its original position since the shackle mounts were offset outwards for bolt head clearance.

The springs I intended to use were 51" Dodge rear springs from a '74 W200. The '72-'74 Dodge springs are arched more than the '75+ springs, so I hoped that the '74 springs would maintain the 4" lift that was already on the truck. Stock Dodge front springs are only 48" long, but both measure 24" from the front eye to the center bolt. I removed the stock overload spring from the pack, and actually added another leaf from an '88 D100 rear spring pack to maintain ride hight, yet the suspension remains quite soft. The old springs then recieved new 1.25" polyurethane bushings and RE spring clamps. Also note that the stock front springs used 1/2" bolts, since I was using rear springs, I upgraded to the 5/8" bolts to match the rear suspension.

Since I plan to install a transfercase doubler in the next year or so, I really didn't want to modify my front driveshaft for the Dana 60's longer pinion, so I needed to move the front axle forward slightly. This would also improve approach clearance. Since I wasn't sure exactly where the spring mount would need to be for proper shackle angle and driveshaft length, I built these trick adjustable front spring mounts. The rear-most hole lines up with the original front spring mount position, and each hole is spaced about ~1.2" from the next.

This position resulted in a decent shackle angle, and allowed the driveshaft to remain unchanged for the time being.

Now that the front suspension seemed to be ironed out, I moved on to the steering. I installed an ORD steering arm on the passenger side knuckle using new ARP studs. Then I drilled and tapped an '88 D100 steering box and mounted it to the frame in the 2wd postion and used an ORD pitman arm. The frame needs to be boxed around the steering box when going to crossover steering, but I skipped it to meet my deadline, it will be boxed very soon.

After centering the axle and the steering box, I measured for the drag link, and ordered one from ORD as well. It uses 1" one ton Dodge tie rod ends and has a very slight S-bend to aid engine crossmember clearance. I did not have to modify my crossmember. I also fabbed some heavy duty mounts and installed my 2"X8" hydro-assist steering ram. Next I modified a used Borgeson steering shaft from an '86 4wd Ramcharger by shortening it and installing a Flaming River u-joint inplace on the weak rag-joint. 4.75" tall competition bump stops were installed to add a little limit to the new soft front suspension.

To finish the steering, I swapped out the stock steering pump/reservoir combo for a pump from the '85 W350 that uses a remote reservoir. With hydro-assist steering rams, extra fluid reservoir is needed to deal with the increased changes in volume as the ram extends and contracts. I employed a friend to fabricate this slick 2.5 quart aluminum reservoir. It should have roughly 3-4 times the capacity of the stock remote reservoir or the stock pump/reservoir combo.

With just days before I had leave for my next wheeling trip, I quickly fabbed this bumper to house that winch I mentioned earlier. I started with 3/8" side plates mounted to the frame with four 9/16" grade 8 boltes per side. The top plate is also 3/8" plate, there is a 1.5" square 11GA support welded across the rear, and the 1.75" 11GA round tubing supports it across the front. The braces and the stinger are also made out of 1.75" round 11GA tubing. The fairlead mounting plate is milled from 1/4" plate. Another square tube brace was welded between the side plates and a simple 11GA skid plate was added. The corners are cut so that I have a pocket for Hi-lift jack to sit w/o sliding around. Then I powder coated the whole thing a metallic silver color. The ends of the main tube were cut even with the edges of the wheel openings under the fenders. Also tow hooks were mounted to the 3/8" side plates.

In the end it all seemed to work very well. Unfortunatly, a spun timing chain ended my trip early so I have yet to fully test my new front suspension. I do however need to perform a mod to the steering pump to increase the flow. Steering with that large 2" ram was slow at best, but it still worked perfect.