I am thinking about putting my rear springs directly under the frame of my 78 F-250 for the future project of putting rear steer on it. I am just curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.
I am putting rockwells under it, for now it will be a straight rear axle, but since im doing the shackle flip I think now would be the time to adress moving the rear springs.
I think the two best ways to do this is to use front spring hangers and shackles on the rear or making my own from box tubing and bracing them with a couple pieces of plate. What do you guys think?

The one concern I have is having less side to side stability on a truck with an increased center of gravity, when its all done there should be a total of 10-12 inches suspension lift. Should I be worried about this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Dave

to much lift for trailing or rocks, if you do this it might as well be a mud truck. theres a guy that just did this and he only got 4" of lift i think, i was going to do the same thing but i decided to keep the springs in stock location and got 8" to 9" of lift useing front springs hangers for the back of my springs, worked rather nice

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/3/web/2139000-2139999/2139951_103_full.jpg

check the pics of your rigs section, 2nd to last page i think the guy has his 78 f150 with the springs right under the frame

Search this form (google) on inboard shackle, there have been a few people that did it and liked it.
I have not.

az ford4x4 (the mod in this forum) did it to his with 63 chevy rears

if you tink about it...the older 67-77.5 f-250s had much narrower rear frames, so the springs were a good bit closer together on the rear axles.....i dont think its be too bad on the road as long as the springs arent too soft


bsd i would really like to know how you got that much lift just using those hangers not dropped way down...

the guy spoken about before that did it in his '79 (verticaltrx) is a friend of mine. he said he gets crazy flex with it and it looks like it works pretty well. if you're going to put it on rocks then i don't know if that extra flex will help you that much anyway. seems like with those its mostly down travel and tire size that gets the job done.

Sorry guys, I shoulda put more info in there(im working midnights, cant think straight) it is mainly for mud and trails, not much in the way of rocks in northern wv, just some steep muddy hills. The truck will be a trailered when the project gets finished so it wont be driven on the road.

Im leaning towards using 4 x 4 box tubing to make longer spring hangers and shackle mounts to mount the springs directly under the frame rails and to give it extra lift, I should also mention that I made 4" tall spring perches out of 3 x 5 box tubing, I welded 3/8 plate on top of those and drilled them for the center pins. I had 3/4 inch ubolts made that are 14" long that will go through spring plates made of 1/2" plate. Damn I hope this stuff will hold together and work ok. Dave

You will be fine. I agree with others here and think that is too much lift. I wouldn't exceed 8" I don't think you will be too tippy if you stiffen the leaf packs a little. Add a leaf or two from another pack with your stock pack and it should net you around another 4". combined with the shackle flip you should be where you want to be. I've used this combo without inboarding my leafs and it works great. I'm currently using stock Bronco leafs with two additional F150 leafs.

I dont have a Ford but I did inboard my rear springs on my Chevy K5, I like it a lot, great for the rocks, tons of flex but too much body roll on the street. I wouldnt reccomend it for a mud truck, especially that tall, I have about 5" of lift with 40s and a heavy ass truck. It get scary on the street, I am gonna put a sway bar on it today for street driving. Its worth it if you need the flex but if not it will be more of a hassle and scary than anything.

Again, not a Ford but I did the same mod on my Blazer recently and am very pleased with the results. I don't drive on the street but have had it 50+ on some sand washes and it seemed pretty stable. I used ORD super shackles and spring hangers, 63" Chevy's without the overload, and went to the bottom of the frame with the brackets. I wanted to keep it as low as possible for rock crawling. I figure I got about 2 1/2 to 3" of lift. I run a traction bar and BBCS on a Corp 14 bolt. 42" IROKS.

http://fourdice4x4.com/photos/albums/pebbles/Blazer11_052006_0129_002.sized.jpg

netbsd, where the hell did you purchase new front (rear spring) hangers at??? im looking to either do that similar set up or flip my rear hangers... ive looked at NPD and LMC truck and neither of them show the front hangers as purchase items, they only show the rears....

I've got two sets I can sell but they are used.

You lose some stability with soft inboarded springs but it shouldn't matter off road and very little on road unless you like cornering doing 60mph :flipoff2:

i dont want to buy a used set. if i do it i wanna use all new hangers and hardware..... if i cant find some im gonna get a beefed up set of rear flip hangers.

i dont want to buy a used set. if i do it i wanna use all new hangers and hardware..... if i cant find some im gonna get a beefed up set of rear flip hangers.
Yeah. I swapped my front and rear hangers for Sky hangers. they're spendy but it was worth it at the time since I needed it to be wheelable for a trip I was going on and didn't have time to make my own. :)

you can buy them at ford for pretty cheap