Been working hard to get the 60's put in. got the gears (7.17's) set up and the detroit installed. I really wanted to run hi steer but have been plagued in the past with broken studs resulting in a suck ass wheelin day. After four failures and four diffirent ways to keep the arms on I ended up going back to low steer.
This rig I am determined to run hi steer and am not chancing breaking any more steering arms. I have never seen this done before but it's got to be better than those damn studs.
and the back side....
I first had a friend run the knuckles through a caustic wash machine to rid the castings of any oil or grease in the pores. I then preheated the castings to about 300 degrees. I used 7018 rods and cranked the machine up to 175 amps and went to town. it took almost 15 rods per knuckle. I ground V grooves everywhere there was gonna be a weld and welded the arms on first. I made a gusset out of some 3/4 inch and welded it in next. The welds came out pretty decent, couple of small pin holes but all in all I don't think these arms are ever going to break off.
I pre fabbed a new cross member with 32 inch centers for the full width diffs. I will be running the rears up front.
I also fabbed up the new offset shackles from some 3/8 material. Next I cut out the old spring mounts and notched a 2x2 chunk of frame out to make room for the cross member.
It was a pain to cut out as the stock cross member had to be notched and the old bumper was welded to the spring mounts.
