I'm about to do a Ford spring swap and hoping to flip the U-bolts while I'm at it. I'd be fabricating my own spring plates, and I'm wondering if I should have the shocks attach to the spring plates, or make separate shock mount brackets to weld to the axle housing. I'll be changing my '81's stock shock style for the one-forwards/one-backwards style of newer trucks. Is one or the other method of attaching shocks to the axle preferred for some reason? Seems like the same amount of work.

 

search 63" chevy spring swap and you will see a better way to mount shocks.
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20665
or this with shock mount http://www.nwtoys.com/content/135-ch...-swap-faq.html

 

I promise I've never seen that 2nd link, but I came up with the same thing and it works great! Pretty stable and plenty of room to flex.


OP, save yourself some time and money by grabbing the u-bolts and plates from the F-150 that you get the springs from, they're already flipped.

 

^ that looks great. good job.

 

You're correct about the Ford already being flipped, but as I recall, the F150 has shock mounts directly on the axle, so its spring plates are useless to me. As for its U-bolts, I'd use them but they were a royal pain to remove because of rust, so I'm getting new ones anyway.

The kind of mount you did is to the axle. Is there anything to be gained or lost by having the shock mount to approximately the top of the leaf pack, instead of at the height of the axle?

 

There's not enough room under the bed/body to fit your shock if you mount to the top of the plate.

The best possible mounting position is paraellel with the springs and facing rearward (same direction of axle travel thru suspension cycle).

 

Alright, my next question for The Fab Shop would be: how careful do I have to be about welding the axle housing? I'm new to welding and don't want to warp it.

 

im told the best thing is to drain the gear oil so you dont cook it while your welding and lose the viscosity.

 

I wouldnt worry about it youre only welding on shock mounts.

 

Mine are mounted low on the axle so that I can run a longer shock (14") as vertical as possible. Plus, having the mount at or below the center line of the axle is supposed to help with axle wrap.

http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/4R_suspe...shtml#R-Shocks

As far as welding, like Drew said, if you're only welding shock mounts don't worry about it, just don't go crazy doing 17 passes without letting it cool in between. And I would leave the gear oil in it, it's only going to help displace the heat, and you're not going to get it any hotter than you would driving down the road anyway.

 

Here's how mine are with the u-bolt flip kit.

Edit: Bad pic but its the only one I have, I welded shock mounts on the axle and just use the existing top mounts.

 

Just wrap the axle housing with wet towels on each side of the weld and let cool inbetween passes and you should be ok.