Pics for 52 Rat

[LEEVON]

Keep in mind the crossmember itself is a little deeper than the framerails, by roughly 1/2". I made up for that by tapering the bottom sections up a bit toward the bottom rail. Pretty much just made a relief cut or two and beat it to fit the channel...

[52 Rat]

Originally Posted by LEEVON

Keep in mind the crossmember itself is a little deeper than the framerails, by roughly 1/2". I made up for that by tapering the bottom sections up a bit toward the bottom rail. Pretty much just made a relief cut or two and beat it to fit the channel...

Just the information and photos I was looking for! Thanks Leevon.

[Dan Bowles]

Leevon, did you see the spammer with the Nike shoes posting up? You might want to get some before you drop somethin on them toesies!!

Nice set up, by the way. What year did that come off of? So the info is linked to these pics when someone else comes along...

We were going to do that with a '69 set up but it was so rotted that we jacked up the rear of the truck and the dang arm bent. Ended up sending that one to scrap.

[weldvair@embarqmail.]

Great way to get a nice ride cheap.....good work

Don

[LEEVON]

Shoes? Wearing them isn't required in Arkansas.

I believe the parts came from a '72 C20, I bought the back 1/2 of the frame for $50 and it came with new u-bolts and trailing arm bushings, a set of axle saddles plus a crossmember the guy was trying to fabricate to fit it under his '37 pickup. I used his crossmember to make the end pieces on the factory one. The rest of the stuff went to scrap...so with the cheap price, new parts and scrapping the rest I came out ahead It was meant to be.

[mr48chev]

Interesting, I have a trailer sitting in the yard that might end up getting changed to leaf springs in the near future and be the supplier for the truck arms for the 48 if I decide to go that way.

[Dan Bowles]

I'm assuming the through tubes are for exhaust routing? Like a C3 Vette!

[LEEVON]

Originally Posted by Dan Bowles

I'm assuming the through tubes are for exhaust routing? Like a C3 Vette!

Yep! But I don't fit in a vette so I'm improvising

Almost forgot, thanks Don your truck is looking good.

[LEEVON]

Since this thread might develop into a how-to of sorts I thought I'd add some more pics and information.

I wanted the airbags to clear the frame to the inside so I could get full drop so I had to tweak the arms inward. Not a big deal, especially if you're not using airbags, but the width of the frames ('72 and '50) are different so there are variables if you're mounting stock coils, coil-overs, bags or whatever. I think a stock coil spring set-up would be a bit easier yet. If you look at the first mock-up photo where the springs are directly under the frame I had the arms mounted on the axle at stock width, measuring off of my '71 swb for reference. All a guy would have to do is fab a top spring mount and reinforce the frame then throw springs in there.

You can see here how I moved the arms inward, it was also important that the u-bolts cleared the c-notch. The panhard bar is a nice beefy piece with heim joints from *****************.