'95 F-150 track ready street beast

[Sbeck09]

Alright it's really getting good now.

Since I last updated you all I have completed painting the frame and begun reassembly. This time it's for real. This is the push to make it live.

First up was making sure the supporting cast of components was ready to go back in the frame. One thing that has always irritated me about Ford is that they never put any coating on their diffs. My IRS diff was no exception with plenty of surface rust. So I took it as a chance to try out one of those rust dissolvers. I wanted to paint it to match the engine block. Pretty happy with the results.



With that ready and the frame dry it was time to install the diff bushings. WOW that was a terrible job! I bought the solid aluminum kit thinking it wouldn't be a big deal. Uh no...installing these was worse than removing the factory bushings and that's known to be a tough procedure. I did prevail, of course. I figured out how to use a bottle jack as a press so that helped, but that wasn't until the last bushing...go figure. If you ever do this, just use poly.



It made sense to just keep rolling on the rear so I grabbed the lower arms and knuckles since those are the only factory parts returning to the chassis. I've been slowly ordering and hording parts to eliminate all the rubber bushings and add significant adjustment. The spherical bearing conversion for the toe link and lower control arms are some work, but WELL worth it. From the factory the lower control arm is basically in bind due to the rubber bushing in the front. After the spherical I can move the arm all the way with 2 fingers.





Then onto the truck



It is nice to know that I won't have to replace anything in the rear soon since it is all new. Just made since to start with fresh everything.

Then onto the front to get the arms and spindles installed so this time the hubs can be packed and installed with the brakes. I'm excited to see how all this looks together.



That's where I'm at for now. I'll plug away each night this week on starting to plumb the brakes and fuel hard lines while everything is out of the way. I'm hoping to set the cab back on in the next couple weeks, but I have a good bit of work before then.