i was thinking about doing a straight axle conversion on my truck in the near future and wanted to see if anybody has done this before here and could give me some pointers on what i will need or some tips to how to keep it as drivable as posible, so if any of you guys have done this before or know somebody who has on a 97-03 4x4 f-150 let me know what i will need or links to any websites that will help, thanks alot guys for any help you could provide

 

I have 2 tips for you. The first, if it says Fabritech on it run away as fast as you can, or beware the crappy parts and sticker shock. The other tip, get a better truck to do the swap on. The 97-03 F150 is not a very good platform to start from. To do it right you're talking about alot of fabrication and work to make it fit right. To be honest a 92-96 F150 is about as good as you can get for this swap. Its almost bolt in and probably close to half the cost of the swap into a 97. I looked at doing it to mine and even with me doing 99% of the fab work it was still going to be $3k. If you don't have the ability/talent to do the fab work it'll be $5k+.

 

well this is the truck i am going to do it on, and most of the fab work will be done by me or i got 4 real good welders that work for me, thanks for the hint about fabritec what is wrong with them by the way?

 

Some of the parts on the D44HD leaf spring kit are built wrong and many of their parts I've seen aren't braced correctly or welded very well. I've also seen/heard of similar complaints with their other kits. Basically just shotty work. The last I saw it was something like $2000 for the stage I kit which does NOT include the axles. Its basically springs and a couple brackets (not even a complete kit). They will sell you the axles too, but they're asking literally 3-4 times what they're worth. I have talked to a grand total of 1 person who actually liked their fabritech kit when done, and he ended up rolling the truck a couple months later.

 

thanks for the info