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Lifting a 65-79 I beam


Rustbucket350

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I'm lifting a 2wd 78 F150 with the older style I beams. There's no camber adjustment besides bending the beam so I'm going to make some drop brackets and add camber bolts. If I had a perfectly level surface it wouldn't be very difficult. My question is how do I know how far to drop the axle pivot on an unlevel surface to get the camber + or - 2 degrees of zero?
 


rusty ol ranger

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I dont think theres any good way to be honest.

Plus the camber bolts that allow adjustable camber on the ball joint beams go on the knuckle where the ball joint is, not where the frame pivot is.

Unless ive misunderstood the question.

Im sure if you look around theres prolly drop brackets just for this where you just tell them the amount of lift you plan on.

IIRC it takes over 3 or 4 inches to really whack them out.
 

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I meant the offset camber bolts on the I beam pivot bushing they use on a lot of drop brackets. Unfortunately, nobody makes drop brackets for these and they don't have a caster/camber bushing, just a kingpin on the knuckle. I guess I'll get it as close as possible and hopefully be able to fine tune it with the camber bolts. It's sitting about 5 degrees positive now.
 

rusty ol ranger

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I meant the offset camber bolts on the I beam pivot bushing they use on a lot of drop brackets. Unfortunately, nobody makes drop brackets for these and they don't have a caster/camber bushing, just a kingpin on the knuckle. I guess I'll get it as close as possible and hopefully be able to fine tune it with the camber bolts. It's sitting about 5 degrees positive now.
You could contact a place that does front end alignments on big rigs. They should be able to align it properly for pry 100 or so bucks.
 

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rusty ol ranger

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Kingpins, I haven't heard or used that word for YEARS, lol, I know I should get out more
Way better then ball joints IMO. More rugged, you can drive with them (the bushings anyways) shot with very little ill effect, just seem so superior to Ball joints in every way.
 

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Well I'm almost there. I have pictures if anyone is interested. What I ended up doing was installing the front springs and leveling the I beams to determine the amount of lift from the factory I beam pivot hole. In this case it was 4". I then welded some channel steel to the factory I beam brackets to make drop brackets, and the early ones like this have an additional brace that's at an angle off the engine crossmember so I made new ones rather than extend the originals. I also made 4" blocks to go between the radius arm brackets and the frame to drop the radius arms the same as the I beams, plus an extension out of 1/4" steel for the side of the frame to radius arm bracket.

The front springs are 4x4 springs and I realized way too late that on the 4x4 early trucks that the spring is mounted upside down. This means the top of a 2x4 spring is the same dimension of the bottom of a 4x4 spring. If you're beginning to get confused, so was I. They're the same on one end but not the other.

Oh well, I cut down some 4x4 lower retainer perches, bolted them to the I beams, made aluminum spring bushings to control lateral movement, and welded some additional material to the factory washer to control vertical movement. Now I'm ready to set the toe and double check the alignment... after I weld in some additional radius arm bracing since you can't drop the crossmember on the early models.

I believe I solved the tie rod angle problem by bending the tie rods in my press to clear the radius arms. The steering wheel is no longer straight but it may be able to be reclocked or I'll make either a clockable steering shaft or drag link. Nobody offers a drop pitman arm for these.

Easy right?
 

Rustbucket350

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Instead of pics I'll leave you guys with this to close this thread off. I'm amazed at how well this truck drives.

 

Rustbucket350

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Update on this truck. Several thousand miles later it's still fine but now it has 33s and a steering stabilizer. On an alignment rack it was perfectly in spec. Sorry I had to delete the video, I'll have to get a new one.
 

Rustbucket350

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No video yet so here's a taste.



I apologize for not knowing how to resize the image.
 

Josh B

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Josh B

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I replaced kingpin bushings on a 73 Econoline E300 during the mid 80s, thinking they had shims in there somewhere for alignment
 
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Rustbucket350

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Why is this not a sticky thread?
 

Josh B

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When I did the 73 E300 one ton van I used rubber(the kind that goes on 50 year roofs) to shim it up, and absorb the load. Maybe you could add a triple layer
 

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