So not long after i snapped the first D60 in half, i called up my buddy Eric (of EMS Offroad) to see what he could do for me. After discussing it, we decided that building a housing would be better in the long run, than just swapping another stock one in, so thats what we did.
The axle is built to match the specs of a 78-9 Ford D60, with a few little improvements. The center section is a Currie Rock Jock center section, which in addition to having an extra 3/4" of ground clearance thanks to the rotated diff cover, also sports a bigger pinion seal and larger outer pinion bearing. The pinion angle was rotated up 5º to help improve the driveshaft angle. The axle tubes are new 3.5" DOM machined to fit the Superduty diff seals. The knuckles & Cs are stock pieces with some added material in key places. We used CAGE Offroad's weld-on brackets instead of the traditional c-bushings, and set them up to keep the same caster i was running on the old axle. And then of course after everything was welded up, we trussed it. Unfortunately the ARB was bent when the housing broke, so a new ring-side case half had to be ordered in from Australia in order to fix it, altho everything else internally was fine. Mix in a new long-side inner shaft, and ive now got a complete, almost-ready-to-bolt-in custom D60 for the truck! All i did was add in the lower tracbar & hydro-assist mounts, and the swap was done! |
