Thread: Off the Wall Straight Axle Front End Idea

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Hey guys, wanted to get some opinions. I'm building a T-Bucket and had an off the wall idea.

For my straight axle front end I'm thinking about building it from scratch. My cousin is set up to bend 1 3/4" tube so I would get him to bend the drop in some tube and cope the ends. I can have a machinist at work to machine some round bar to accept Ford king pins. Then have one of the certified welders at work can weld the ends on the tube. If he is off a little on the camber we can rebend to correct the angle. He would have to get both ends timed correctly though. Then I just pull the spindles of a mid 70's Ford 1/2 ton. Buy new king pins for said truck and put it together. Rebuild the brakes, paint and its ready

May sound crazy but I'd always rather do it myself when I can. Beside I like the idea of the truck spindles, can't by an axle for them. On top of all that it urks me to spend $200 on an after market axle made of less than $25 worth of material, built with jigs in a rate of probably several an hour.

Not sure about all of the Ford trucks around that year, but my '73 Ranger has discs on the front.

Speedway sells axles that are 2" 1/4" wall. Haven't crunched any numbers yet, but I'd have to go with 1 3/4" OD to have the ability to bend it. Then again I could buy the dies for two inch and still be money ahead.

Ford 1/2 tons ran disk brakes with king pins from 73 to about 80. Figured I'd use mid 70's disk up front, with a 9" from the same in back. Get a master cylinder for the same. And have good solid brakes with an easy pedal. Probaly still have to put in a valve to adjust bias, with the weight difference but you never know. Pickups are front heavy too.

We used to make our own sprint car front axles, just had a fixture to hold the ends at the correct angle. Also gave us the ability to play with alignment a bit that would effect the handling. By all means go for it. We built ours out of moly and tigged everything. Sometimes we even sold a few to help with the cost of racing.

I have made several also. 1 3/4" will work ok on a "T" bucket or similar car. I like the look of 2" better tho. Use .250 wall and you can bend it in a regular pipe bender. I have one similar to what Harbor Freight sells. Bought mine thirty years ago for about four times what they get now!

IF you can find them, use early Econoline spindles, trim the arm, and they are compatible with disc brakes and regular Ford wheel bearings. King pin kits are getting hard to find tho. Got a couple sets off Ebay.

The axle on my daughters bucket, I used shortened 49-54 Chevy spindles, modified VW rotors and old Vega calipers.

If you draw a line down the tube for reference the bends will come out perfect. Then I chuck the bent tube into a fixture on my mill table (made from an old econoline axle end) and cut the kingpin boss angle with a milling cutter. Weld on the bar stock ends, drill and ream the holes for pin and lock.

Thanks for the ideas guys. Details not yet worked out, but I'm going to do it. Just needed to hear someone else say go for it.

Next step in the design will be talk to the alignment guy. I'm going to let one of the welder at work weld it. I know we have some TIG welders, but I'll leave the details to him.