Back in '87 when grandpa passed away from cancer, I got the '65 3/4 ton fleetside he had bought for me. I daily drove that thing until 2005. Rolled it going to church. In '91 I found a rear end that had way better gearing than the corporate 4.57 axle. It had a tag on it, 3.54, and the rpm formula calculators matched the rpm's I would turn going down the road. I later discovered I had a '68 Dana 60, supposedly a rare breed nowadays. When I installed it in '91 it was an easy swap, except I found out the hard way that the panhard bar is different between the corporate axle and Dana 60. I took the truck to a welder and he modified the frame mount, but the panhard bar was in a bind. I ran it like this from '91 until the day I rolled the truck in 2005. I now have a different truck, basically the same as the one grandpa got me back then, except this one has three-on-the-tree, and will soon get the SM420 that was in the other truck. I still have the Dana 60 too, and plan to install it in this truck as well.
This time around I want to have the bar modified instead of the mount. Do you guys see any issue with modifying the panhard bar to be able to mount correctly to the frame mount? After making sure the tracking was correct, my idea was to have the panhard bar cut in two places, so the two pieces that mount to the frame or axle would be perpendicular to their respective mounts, and the middle piece would be angled accordingly, and then some gussets welded in for strength. Does this seem like a viable option?
I did locate a '70 truck with a Dana axle in it, and it has the correct frame mount, but there is no easy way to extract it from the truck in the junkyard. So I decided to resort to modifying the bar instead.
