I was woundering if you could do a u-bolt flip kit on the front of my stock 85 pickup up i got stock push pull steering and springs. I didnt know if the plate would be to close to the steering rod. Could I do it or not ?

 

You can do the passenger side OK. On the driver's side, not possible generally due to draglink/steering arm and spring plate clearance. Might be possible if you flip the ball on the steering arm (ball facing up):

 

How Hard is it to flip the ball upward?

 

There was a writeup/thread on doing this over on the Pirate4x4.com forum.

Grind off weld, press out stud, invert and weld it back in place. The hard part is that you need an adjustable drag link, since you need to turn the lower end of it over to match the steering arm. The adjustable ones have threaded ends and this is easy to do. The stock one is all one piece, you might be able to cut and weld the drag link to make it work.

 

Stole this link from Slacker....he found this write up on marlin:

http://board.marlincrawler.com/index.php?topic=33240.0

One thread on Pirate: http://www.pirate4x4.com/tech/cross/Cross.html (not exactly but good steering info)

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showt...ring+ball+flip

 

Not to throw too much cold water on this idea but that's a lot of trouble to gain 1/2" clearance in two spots under the front axle. After installing my OME lift kit I couldn't make my front draglink work and considered flipping the ball on my steering arm. My conclusion was that it was quite a pain and I actually found a few threads on various sites where people then lost all steering because the weld on the flipped ball failed. I then thought about one of my children driving my 4Runner and promptly ordered a Procomp drop draglink instead. If I read correctly, this is your DD?

 

I think OME makes (or at least used to) a flat sided u-bolt for the driver's side to help with draglink clearance because of that very issue.

 

Got them with the original order...I ordered the full kit. They didn't help. The bottom back of the draglink still hit the U-bolts while turning. ...and no it wasn't bent, etc. The Procomp draglink did the trick. Not only did it change the angle to almost flat but it's also smaller in diameter where it fits over the steering knuckle ball.

Pic attached: