To me, it's not all about the weight. Its about a unique badass street/strip ego crusher. I guess if were a vehicle that I would attend diesel drag events with and compete, it would stay 2wd. Do a ladder bar setup and use huge slicks. But street manners would suffer horribly.
With 4wd I can drive to the track, right into the staging lanes, and embarrass the hell out of the guy in the other lane with the new corvette. Same thing on the street. I could drive around in 2wd with the hubs locked, and pull a lever if the need arises. Also, I could put some e load tires on, and tow whatever I want.
Anyways, here are a few pics of what I have going. I got it as low as possible in the front hacking the crossmember up. Most of the 3/16 steel plate is tacked in.
Front and rear heights are the same. The 245/75/16 factory tires are almost exactly the same size as the new 275/60/17's, so it almost looks factory that way.
The factory f250 radius arms and trackbar mount wont work. So I ordered a bunch of parts from ballistic fabrication to make a 4 link setup for the front. Some of the parts will me here this week, and some are backordered.
Here is the suspension geometry laid out on a piece of plywood.
Open to suggestions here. Far from ideal, but with the very limited travel I am going to have, it should work fine I think.
The trackbar is getting cut, sleeved, and extended. Then drilled and tapped for an adjustable rod end to be used with a welded on bracket. To keep the draglink and trackbar parallel, the draglink will have to go through the top of the pitman arm. There is just enough clearance under the steering box to do this. There is plenty of meat on the pitman arm to retaper it the other way for the bigger f250 ball joint.
Also gonna make a custom adapter for the bottom of the springs using the van spring retainer.
If I chose to lift it 4" instead of lowering it, I would be done by now!
Hopefully some progress this week when the ballistic stuff gets here.