1995 F150 4x4 Big Bird Tribute

[Junior]

Confident that the front syspension would work, we welded on a set of very temporary lower shock mounts, set the truck on a pair of steel tubes where the shocks will go and got the damn truck on its wheels again. The stance was simply a factor of how long I cut the tubes, so the final stance will be different but we still stared at the truck from every different direction getting a feel for how the truck might look when completed. We even staged the front fenders!

 

[Junior]

Jeez that truck was hard to move without any tie rods connecting the front tires! Now that the truck is on all fours again, seems like a swell time to work on the rear end. We figured the pinion angle and tacked the perches a while back, can't remember if I posted the images but we used an angle finder and ensured that it matched what we started with. Now we need to work on the truss. We started with this truss we got for about $100 from Ruff Stuff. Nice part.

 

[Junior]

Since that bad boy is a universal deal, we had to trim it for our application, make some end caps, weld them up and trim it to fit nice for final welding. Wyatt has become quite the welder these days. If you scroll back to the start of this build, you can see how he has improved.

 

[Junior]

We will use chevy one ton pickup disc brakes for the rear. Great parts that are easy to find and cheap to purchase. The mounts in the image below were also acquired from Ruff Stuff. You can see the pinion guard next to the brackets, we will get that installed later. It is important to ensure the axle housing is straight, and is kept straight when you weld up the truss. The professionals at Pro-Gear Differentials in San Diego have all the necessary fixtures and decades of experience in getting it right. We will drop this bad boy off with them so they can massage it to perfection! Can't wait to post the image of the rear end when complete! In the meantime, we need to get started on the steering.....

 

[Junior]

Since this build is a tribute to the infamous Big Bird, we simply had to integrate swing set steering. The TTB front end is famously durable but is also well known for bump steer when the system is modified for long travel. Bump steer is caused when the axle pivot points are different than the pivot points for the steering tie rods. The swinging of the system in this manor causes the steering wheel (and front tires) to constantly steer one way than the other when rolling through deep whoops. Swing set steering is designed to beef up the steering and change the steering tie rod pivot points to reduce or eliminate this issue. We went with a double swing set steering set up from Threat Motorsports. As you can see, his parts are amazing. #threat #threatmotorsports #threatsteering #doubleswingsteering #obsford #swingsetsteering

 

[Junior]

This system will utilize 1.5 inch tubing for tie rods and 7/8th inch rod ends. Threat's do it your self kit provides everything except the tie rods themselves which we will fab up. The longer tie rods will be build with 1/4" wall 1.5" tubing to ensure we have no issues. Since we will have to put a slight bend in one of the tie rods to achieve maximum travel, the thick wall tube will ensure it stays strong.

First, we had to clear the face of the engine cross-member to make room for one of the steering pivot boxes, and remove the factory oil cooler dealio which uses water branched off from the lower radiator hose. Easy mod to utilize a factory lower hose without this system. Even provides additional space for a larger oil filter.

 

[Junior]

Here you can see where we mounted the two pivot boxes as well as the difference between the thick tube and your typical .120 wall steel. It took some work to get this thick walled tube in Yuma.

 

[Junior]

Here you can see what the system looks like after we got everything tacked up. You will notice that we used water pipe instead of the thick walled tube until we were sure everything was right. That thick walled DOM was about $10 per foot!

 

[Junior]

Once we were confident we were in the ball park, we started working with the expensive steel! Here you can see that we cycled, cycled, cycled before we bent the drivers side tie rod as necessary and yes, cycle cycle repeat. It was crazy hard to bend that thick walled tube 10 degrees!

 

[Junior]

With everything working, time to weld things up for good. Once we welded up the bungs on the tube ends we ran a tap through them to ensure everything was kosher. By "we" Junior means Wyatt..... it is his truck after all! lol

 

[Junior]

Time to weld up the pivot boxes. As you can see, Wyatt can freakin weld!

 

[Junior]

We decided to paint the pivot boxes and hard points while leaving the tie rods clear coated. Looks killer and works fantastic. (in the garage and around the yard)

 

[Junior]

You might have noticed that we pulled the engine. The truck had a factory 5.8 roller motor with 300,000 miles on it. Our plan was to re-build the engine but after taking a look at the calendar we decided to go a different direction.

 

[Junior]

Like any good Father would do, Junior stepped up and donated the bullet in his Bronco Prerunner for the build!

 

[Junior]

Not sure how that image of Tuco got in there but he has been over seeing the entire process. Not sure if we previously addressed this but the truck was wrecked on the drivers front corner. When we were working with the TTB pivots you could see that the drivers beam pivot which is located on the passenger side was horrible cracked. We did some metal surgery from the underside but needed to complete the operation once the engine was removed. Check this out. Missed the image after the cracks were welded up and before the support plate was added.

 

[Junior]

We will have to swap the EFI stuff from one engine to the other. No real issues there except the fact that the distributor shafts were different lengths took us by surprise.

Here you can see both engines side by side, Wyatt working on his new power plant along with his buddy Cameron.

 

[Junior]

Check out this bullet, ready for install! Another shout out to Dave "the Modelman" Baldwin for donating the sweet headers! We will have to devote an entire page to all the folks that have been helping us out with free stuff, free advice, crazy deals, interest free financing, on and on.

 

[Junior]

Like any responsible truck owner, Wyatt needs to have a bumping stereo. Since this truck has a sweet flip/fold down rear bench seat, locating a giant sub woofer is a challenge. Rather than simply removing the rear seat, or setting the sub on it taking up valuable seating space and making the flip/fold down feature inop, we decided to remove the small seat/console between the two front bucket seats and craft a custom console.

The plan for the console is to provide a place for a couple of drink holders, a spring loaded coin holder/dispenser, room for a race radio or GPS as well as a stereo head unit. Most importantly however, the console will also hold a rear facing sub-woofer speaker. Here are some progress images of it. The box fits nicely between the seats and is bolted down using the mounts for the mini seat it replaces.

 

[Junior]

Special thanks to Jake for taking my pencil/powerpoint/excel plans and turning them into the real deal. Yuge thanks to our neighbor "Chuck of the North" who has skills and tools to work with wood. The 3/4" MDF was crafted with amazing accuracy. All edges were dado (sp?) and fit together like an awesome puzzle. Loads of glue and screws to hold this thing to together when that monster sub starts slamming! Here is an image before the final cuts were made. As you can see, the rear faces downward so spilled soda won't end up in the speaker. We have aluminum panels for the two holes you can see which will be cut out for the items to be inserted.

 

[Junior]

Pickup a pair of 2.5 Fox shocks for the rear. 16 inchers with 7/8 shaft should work swell!