Ok here goes the technical portion of this post.
I will start with the axles. I used some solid axles from a 1976? Ford F250 that was going to the crusher. The front is a Dana 44 and the rear is a Dana 60. You can see the massive size difference from the old dana 30 and 35.
The stock axles use a short steer arm on the drivers side so you have to install a steer arm. I carved mine out of some 3/4 inch plate. The king pins are a pain to remove so I used the High steer arm as a jig to drill and tap the top of the spindle. A new $9 tap from car-quest made this easy. Anyone who has ever changed a u-joint in one of these axles knows how difficult it is to remove the front spindle shaft so while it was apart I put it in the lathe and took a few thousands off to make it easier to remove.While the axles were out I also repacked all the bearings and replaced some of the seals.
I did not want to spend any money repairing the rear drum brakes so I went ahead with a home brew rear disk brake conversion. I used front disks of an 85 F250 and calipers from a 79? Chevy blazer. I fabricated some brackets to hold calipers that bolt directly to the stock Dana brake flanges. because the Ford disk is offset deeper than the Chevy ones no spacers were required. Even with the dual piston Ford front calipers and the Chevy rear calipers I was able to retain the stock master cylinder. The brakes are a little spongy but work and may just need to be bled some more. In the bottum picture you can see the 1/2" plate I used for new spring plates.
The original shock mounts were not going to work so I also fabbed up some new ones
I need to take some more pics and then I will share them
