What track width for Hybrid 44/60?

[FarmerMatt]

Oh, you're not going to ruin that housing with POS radius arms, are you? URF three link is calling your name.

CRASH

P.S. If you need some weld-on radius arm wedges, I have some from Jes's axle.

This housing is setup for a 3 link... If I get a diamond housing than I could just weld on those "C's" & go without having to redesign the whole front suspension... I don't think it'll work though because Diamond uses 3.5" tubes & I don't believe that my radius arms would wrap around them. I was thinking about just doing the whole rock crawler style 3 link with the drivers side upper tied to the drivers lower, but with also going airshock I think I'll need to swaybar the front as well...:confused1 My head hurts.

Matt

 

[CRASH]

I was thinking about just doing the whole rock crawler style 3 link with the drivers side upper tied to the drivers lower, but with also going airshock I think I'll need to swaybar the front as well...:confused1 My head hurts.

Matt

You'll hate it. Performance is totally different depending on which tire is stuffed.

Get the Diamond and three link it.

 

[Paul S]

Matt, can you give us a measurement from the inside (backside) of the inner knuckle to the WMS? This way we can compare to a 44 or whatever & start to make sense of possible widths.

Paul

 

[FarmerMatt]

Damn, I'm backwards... In flipping the 9" I'll need to shorten the long side & lengthen the short side. I was thinking of the pinion & it's, of course, opposite the ring gear. This means building a housing to fit these shafts is out. They would have to offset the diff even closer to the drivers knuckle which will cause clearance problems with the trackbar mount & a whole host of other things.

Andy,
How much clearance do you have over the pinion with your 3 link? The hi9 is insanely high & I'm not sure I'll have the clearance to go that route with the driveshaft & such. The other option I was looking at is ditching the trackbar & doing a upper wisbone off the stock upper frame mounts, but this will make my lowers much longer that the upper & could make for some interesting handling as well. This all may have to wait till after BOTW...

Matt

 

[FarmerMatt]

Matt, can you give us a measurement from the inside (backside) of the inner knuckle to the WMS? This way we can compare to a 44 or whatever & start to make sense of possible widths.

Paul

I can give you an approx. I already pulled the knuckles... I'll let you kn ow in a minute.

 

[FarmerMatt]

Looks to be about 11.5" from where the tube slides in the inner knuckle to the WMS.

 

[Paul S]

Damn, I'm backwards... In flipping the 9" I'll need to shorten the long side & lengthen the short side. I was thinking of the pinion & it's, of course, opposite the ring gear. This means building a housing to fit these shafts is out. They would have to offset the diff even closer to the drivers knuckle which will cause clearance problems with the trackbar mount & a whole host of other things.

Andy,
How much clearance do you have over the pinion with your 3 link? The hi9 is insanely high & I'm not sure I'll have the clearance to go that route with the driveshaft & such. The other option I was looking at is ditching the trackbar & doing a upper wisbone off the stock upper frame mounts, but this will make my lowers much longer that the upper & could make for some interesting handling as well. This all may have to wait till after BOTW...

Matt

I'll be putting my front end back in tonight. If it's helpfull for you I can cylcle it with the springs out & take some pictures of the clearance between the oil pan, exhaust, TB mount, etc... The True Hi9 is higher than my CHP, but from looking at the 2 next to each other the Hi9 looks more stubby & will actually fit better in a tighter space.

Anyway, if you're going to redue your suspension do it right, put the UCA on the passenger side & go 3 link

Paul

 

[CRASH]

Anyway, if you're going to redue your suspension do it right, put the UCA on the passenger side & go 3 link

Paul

Where?

Perhaps it would fit, with acceptable anti-dive numbers, if you used the patented URF Starter Eliminator Kit.......

 

[Paul S]

Where?

Perhaps it would fit, with acceptable anti-dive numbers, if you used the patented URF Starter Eliminator Kit.......

I guess I should have said 'go mid-arm 3 link'.

Paul

 

[CRASH]

Andy,
How much clearance do you have over the pinion with your 3 link? The hi9 is insanely high & I'm not sure I'll have the clearance to go that route with the driveshaft & such. The other option I was looking at is ditching the trackbar & doing a upper wisbone off the stock upper frame mounts, but this will make my lowers much longer that the upper & could make for some interesting handling as well. This all may have to wait till after BOTW...

Matt

It fits fine, the upper mount fits between the motor and the frame just fine after some test cycling. Best pic I have of the mount, you can see it behind the ram mount on the tie rod:

 

[Matt S.]

Very *Bling Bling* Matt, should have looked here before I called!

URF could be alot of fun to build.... or go at it with a tri-4 link:loveu:

 

[Jeff 98XJ WI]

The 9" is offset so by flipping it over the inner shaft lengths will change. I'll have to shorten & respline the short side & buy a longer long side. The holes for the 9" diff are not symetric, but "close". Close enough that every hole will have to be welded & redrilled. My plan is to take a junk yard diff that I have, knock the cross pin & spiders out of it & thread an alignment rod through the housing & the diff. I'll need to machine some spacers to align the rod centered in the tubes out by the knuckles. This should hold everything in place & I'll use the junk diff as a hole guide to drill the new holes. I need to do some more measuring though. The housing is really offset to the drivers side as is. The short side inner shaft is only 14.25" long & will get really short when flipping it over. I belive I've got the clearance to run the diff that far offset as I'm going to airshock the front at the same time. I talked to Diamond axle about a housing & he's telling me that if I send him my inner "C's" that he'll do up a housing for $700. I could have him build a housing to accept my existing shafts. This might end up being the cheaper way for me to go as I got 2 sets of axle shafts that fit this housing now. I'd have to buy 2 long side inners along with cutting / resplining 2 short side inners to replace what I've got... :confused1 I tried to research the "rock crusher" knuckle thing with little success. The knuckles are keyed for the high steer arms & Richard was saying that this is how Currie sets them up. The guy said that Mad4x4 built the front end?... I ordered a true hi9 with a detroit & it should actually be here in a day or 2.:shocked:

Matt

Ok, I did a little searching for pictures and think I've got it now. I see how the distance the one axle shaft end needs to be from the edge of the 3rd member is less than the distance the other axle shaft end needs to be from the other edge of the 3rd member. So, when you flip the third over, one shaft is too long and one is too short. Does the hi9 third use the same offset that a standard third uses? Probably. If the diff will fit in a housing setup for the shafts you got, I think that would be the cheaper way to go. I thought custom 9" housings were cheap? $700 seems kind of expensive to me. Is the issue because it is a FRONT 9"? Maybe you could have a housing built to use the long shafts you have and set the short side to whatever you need to and just get a new short side shaft? Then you wouldn't need to use the spacers you were talking about earlier. Just some thoughts. Jeff

 

[BrettM]

Matt, you gonna go full hydro? use the ram for assist? or just ditch it?

 

[FarmerMatt]

Ok, I did a little searching for pictures and think I've got it now. I see how the distance the one axle shaft end needs to be from the edge of the 3rd member is less than the distance the other axle shaft end needs to be from the other edge of the 3rd member. So, when you flip the third over, one shaft is too long and one is too short. Does the hi9 third use the same offset that a standard third uses? Probably. If the diff will fit in a housing setup for the shafts you got, I think that would be the cheaper way to go. I thought custom 9" housings were cheap? $700 seems kind of expensive to me. Is the issue because it is a FRONT 9"? Maybe you could have a housing built to use the long shafts you have and set the short side to whatever you need to and just get a new short side shaft? Then you wouldn't need to use the spacers you were talking about earlier. Just some thoughts. Jeff

Yes, the hi9 uses the exact same offset as a standard 9" & the offset is on the same side. Building a housing for the shafts I've got is now out. I was backwards on my offsets. In flipping the 9 back over I'll need to get a longer short side & shorten / respline my long side. To build a housing to accept my currant short side (14.25") the pumkin would be butted right up against the inner knuckle "C". By flipping the 9 over I'll end up close to stock length short side inner shaft. I need to do some more research on this. If I buy a housing I would get the Diamond axle housing. Curries are a couple hundred $ cheaper, but strength wise they can't compare. A front end housing is more expensive, but by using my inner knuckle "C's" I can shave about $500 off the deal. I think I'd rather keep the axle narrow & use the spacers. It gives me more flexibility to change up the track width & also protects the hubs. This way if I move them into a different chasis later on I don't have to worry about wanting / needing to narrow the front end. I can pull the spacers & be back at 61" WMS-WMS.

Brett,
I'm going to use the hyd, but I'm not sure how yet. The cheapest way for me to go would be to use it as ram assist. My gear already has the ports so all that would be needed is plumbing, but I'm afraid that this ram would be too big / slow for assist. If I went full hyd. than I would need to get a good pump, orbital valve, & figure out the plubing / mounting. Much more work & I'm worried about loosing "feel" in the high speed prerunning / street driving department. I need to call PSC & find out what they would recomend with what I've got & if they may be interested in trading me out for a smaller ram...

Matt

 

[BrettM]

Brett,
I'm going to use the hyd, but I'm not sure how yet. The cheapest way for me to go would be to use it as ram assist. My gear already has the ports so all that would be needed is plumbing, but I'm afraid that this ram would be too big / slow for assist. If I went full hyd. than I would need to get a good pump, orbital valve, & figure out the plubing / mounting. Much more work & I'm worried about loosing "feel" in the high speed prerunning / street driving department. I need to call PSC & find out what they would recomend with what I've got & if they may be interested in trading me out for a smaller ram...

Matt

It would only make sense to me to go full hydro if you wanted to eliminate the panhard with a triangulated front suspension. you would be money ahead to just sell that ram and use the SurplusCenter ram me, CRASH and others have used.

 

[Jeff 98XJ WI]

Ok, here's my latest plan for the front D44/60 hybrid. Run a stock '89 Ford F350 short side inner shaft at 16 inches center of U-joint to end (Spicer 660182-1 15.97" according to the D60 article on Pirate.) I've already got one, getting extras if needed should be easy, and it'll work for width and pinion position. Run a Spicer 660182-26 32.06" (from the same article) or have the stock long side shaft that I have cut and splined to that length. These two axle shafts combined with my D44 HP center section and stock Ford F350 inner C's and outer parts yield a WMS to WMS of 64.31" and a pinion offset 9.155" toward the drivers side from the center of the vehicle. Running H2 rims, this yields a track width of 62.81". This pinion position is about 5/8" further toward the passenger side than I measure my current pinion position on my 44 using 32.12" and 14.69" shafts. I think that will work out just fine. Tube end to tube end measurement of my current 44 almost matches the theorhetical distance on this drawing, so the coils may hit the inner C's a tad if I mounted them on top of the tube. However, my current coil buckets are mounted 2" above the tube in which case I think the bottom of the coils would clear the inner C's. As stated earlier, I may be going to coilovers though. Here is a link to an image showing all the dimensions that I either calculated or actually measured. Most of them are actual measurements, but a few are calculations based off the measurements.

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IbtGzVo3bMci

Just to compare this to Sean P's rig, he posted on Pirate that he used a '91ish Ford F350 D60 front and simply cut the long side down 6". Since the stock long side is 36.68" according the to Pirate article, cut down it would be 30.68". This is 1.38" shorter than my plan. Due to a slightly larger carrier, there may be a tad bit more distance between the shaft ends in the 60, so that would subtract from the difference between the axle widths. So, I would say Sean P's total wms to wms distance would be around 1.25" narrower that the plan I layed out above. His pinion would be half that distance closer to the oil pan/exhaust too or about 5/8". Jeff