ideas on axle truss/brace d60 14bff?

[swedester]

been searching ck5 for over an hour and can´t find much
I´m going to brace my 1 ton axles,and I´m using leaf springs,so I looking for ideas/pic´s of you guys work.

 

[72blazerguy]

76zimmer just put a DIY4X truss on his 14 bolt

http://coloradok5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261694&page=121

no help on the D60

 

[NorCal_Chris]

I saw a badass truss on pirate I thimk recenly. He had leaves and it was full length with removable sectioms over were the keaves went

 

[Blazinaire]

I'll see if I can get some full width pictures of mine, but here are some that show how I worked the spring perch and truss together on my 14ff. This has about 2 1/2" lift built into it, but you could do similar (without the outermost bend in the top tube, you would just have a reeeeaallyy long notch that way) and get down to about 1 1/4" lift while still extending the truss all the way out to the rear spindles.

 

[swedester]

now that´s what I´m looking for,what welding method did you use?did you pre-heat the housing first?

 

[Blazinaire]

I started out by welding the ends of the top tube (2" .120) to the housing and then I actually made another similar tube and welded it to the underside of the housing to help hold things in place while plating. Once the plates had been cut to fit (4 pieces of 1/8") they were all stitched to the upper tube (1 1/2"-2" beads every foot or less)

The center section was then heated with the acetylene torch until it was glowing and the plates were stitched to the casting. I couldn't run a continuous bead without the casting cooling, so I was on standby with the torch in between my buddy welding small sections. When everything was welded to the center section, we let it cool overnight.

It was finished up the next day by stitch welding the rest of the plates (cooling with wet rags, alternating stitches from one plate, then back to the other side), let them cool, and then cut the bottom tube back off of the axle. Surprisingly there wasn't any notable tension on that lower tube and the outer flanges of the housing were square with each other, my hairbrained idea must have worked!

 

[Blazinaire]

The screen on my digicam is f-ed up, so I couldn't tell what I got a picture of until I got it on the computer , so here's the best ones I could come up with: