78 K10 with a 6.0L twist

Hansoloo

Hansoloo

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Joined
Aug 16, 2023
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74
Location
Santa Barbara, CA
Starting a thread to keep this moving.
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Just picked up this thing off marketplace the second I “finished” my 4runner. Plans for this is to for now make it daily driver worthy with as few larger changes to its current state as possible. That means:
-Better brake booster
-disk brakes
- not dry rotted or semi bald tires
-crossover steering
-fix leaks
-little stuff like fixing the sized locks on the doors adding a sound system and other stuff
These are in no particular order.
Long term plans include doing a similar rear setup to all the spring over broncos with a raptor rear takeoff. I got some 3.0 2nd gen’s with the truck for $300 in great shape. Front will long term get a 3link and coilover conversion too. Also plan do stuff like sliders and skids beforehand so it can still do 4low stuff on leafsprings inbetween and have minimal downtime.
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okay started looking for axles and it’s been pretty easy finding a Chevy 14bolt rear end for this but I’ve struggled to find a good matching passenger side drop D60 front to match. I guess what I’m asking is what front axle would be best to go with with 37s in mind. I’m fine with either the 8lug 14bolt pattern or the 6lug dana44/12 bolt pattern. if there’s a 1ton axle out there that’s already got spring perches that would be great. Excuse my lack of front solid axle knowledge lol.
 
Are you going to be crawling with the truck?
The current front axle can be swapped over to 8 lug easily to match the lug pattern of a 14ff.
A d44/10 bolt front can survive 37's with careful driving but binding it up in the rocks tends to break stuff.
Any gm 60f will bolt in, or pre 91 dodge dana 60 will go in, you just have to use offset bushings, but the dodge axle is slightly narrower than a gm version.
 
plan would be to probably crawl a little bit and yeah the problem is I usually don’t drive carefully and get carried away at least once or twice. If an 8lig conversion isn’t that much I’ll probably just leave the d44 for a bit and hope that an open diff in easier trails keeps the axle alive then find a d60 if I ever go through the trouble of coilovers and a 3link on the front. Just found a set of dodge d60s this morning for cheap on local marketplace so I might go that route unless I find a gm one between me and hammers.
 
8 lug is just a hub/rotor swap. I ran a d44 for a couple years in my k5 on old military surplus 37's. It worked but a dodge 60 was eventually swapped in for piece of mind. With dodge axles just make sure it's a d60f and not a d61f, they are harder to find gears for, or at least used to be.
 
yeah i just looked into it and the hub/rotor swap with nicer locking hubs and stuff is like 1700 in kit form so i might just deal with swapping in a dodge d60 at that point unless theres a cheaper way you know of for the hub/rotor swap and google just directed me to the most expensive one.
 
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