You asked for parts for your dentside. We heard you!
Hey I'm Jesse with QA1. Damien I have a 74 F-100 in the shop today. We're going to be ditching the
leaf springs installing our new 73 to 79 rear torque arm suspension with coil-overs. What do
you say Damien? Let's get to it. This truck's been modified a little bit with shackles and hangers to
lower it and it does have traction bars on it as well. We're going to go ahead and eliminate the
leaf springs the traction bars factory shocks bolt in the new torque arm rear suspension to
help improve traction on this truck. Get the ride height down and improve the drivability.
Now that we have the axle out of the vehicle we can remove the leaf springs like Damian
mentioned earlier. This one does have caltracs on it so this may differ from yours. We are going to
mount this where we can mount our trailing arms and our coil-over shocks in the back.
In order to do that we will modify the spring perches this axle will get our
optional sway bar so we will need to remove the shock the factory shock mounts as well.
Almost ready to put the frame bracket on. This includes the rear shock mount
bracket our watts link bracket and our trailing arm bracket as well as a c-notch.
First thing that we need to do though use the included template and mark can cut the frame.
I have got our cut
line
marked. These two holes are factory holes in the frame. Some of the later trucks do have a bracket
riveted there so the rivets will have to be cut off in order to get those lined up. And then this
flange here needs to be cut off just at the inside of the bend so the frame bracket fits up tight.
Jesse and I have the side brackets installed on the frame for mounting our trailing arms
c-notch and the rear coil-over shocks. Once we've got that done we can get a measurement
from the front mounting hole on the side bracket to the cross member and get that
installed. We've got that done already it's pretty simple install drill a couple holes
after you measure and get everything located. There are two different cross members depending
on whether you have a short box or a long box truck. So make sure you order the correct kit
to get the correct cross member for that. With that we get the rear end finished up get the
torque arm bracket installed torque arm on and get our rear axle back in the truck. Finishing
up on the rear axle will be installing the torque arm and watts link mount. This uses
existing locations on your third member. The big trick with this one is to remember to bolt it
together very loosely until you get everything installed and then start tightening stuff up.
Brackets are in, torque arm is in, we've got the trailing arms hung in
here. We're going to hang the shocks, wheel the axle underneath the truck and
then we'll lower it down and get the axle hung back underneath the truck.
Got the axle back in the truck. We've got a couple small details to work on. We've got
a link that helps support the front of the torque arm that we've got to drill a couple
holes for in the frame bracket. To do that you can mount this thing and swing it into place.
I'll just mark the frame right here and drill some holes.
To provide
lateral support and make sure the axle stays centered underneath the truck we
need to install our watts link. This is the pivot for it we'll have a couple
swedge tubes that go on here we get those adjusted and center the axle up.
The last part that we have to install is the optional rear sway bar. Easiest
way to do this is hang the end links from the frame brackets. First hang
the bar and then swing the bar up into place clamp it onto the axle.
We have our dentside rear suspension installed pretty well wrapped up. We do need to reconnect
the rear brake line, reinstall the driveshaft, bleed the rear brakes. We've got the back of the
truck sitting about at a four inch drop right now. The kit is capable of four to seven inches
of drop and that's a nice complement to our front suspension for these trucks. For more information
on our 73 to 79 F100 front and rear suspension check us out at QA1.net and go drive it.