Herein lies the problem with these axles. This is exactly what I want to do with my truck and width is the problem. A Chevy Dana 60 front axle is approximately 69" wheel mounting surface to wheel mounting surface (WMS-WMS) for the single rear wheel(SRW) axles. Note, the dual rear wheel (DRW) axles are WAY too wide for the 47-54 big bolts. You could use a DRW axle but you'd need to get the SRW hubs to put on it.
The outer extremities of the 47-54 big bolt fenders are about 74 7/8". If you want to use the stock dually type wheels, you're going to have to make an adapter to go from the 8 lug pattern to a 10 lug pattern, which will probably add about 4-6 inches to the WMS-WMS length, so then you're looking at about 73-75 inches WMS-WMS. Then it all depends on how deep of an offset your rims have, and how wide your tires are when inflated.
In my case, I plan to put the newer 19.5" diameter 27775 Accuride wheels on my ride, which have a 5" wheel offset, and tires that are about 9 inches wide inflated. With a Chevy Dana 60, this would put the outer extremity of my front tires at 74 3/4" (with 3 inch thick adapters).. This would put my tires slightly under the fender,, bad.
Two things I've been looking at to alleviate this. First, a place like
www.custom-differentials.com can cut the axle tube down and shorten the axle shafts and rebroach the splines on them for you,,, obviously this is kind of expensive.
The other option is to find one of the SRW Dodge Dana 60's that has a 67" WMS-WMS. They are very similar to the Chevy Dana 60's. This would put your axle with 3" 10 lug adapters at about 73" WMS-WMS and might provide enough room to keep the tires under the fenders providing the offset is great enough. This is the option I'm looking into.
My calculations with a Dodge Dana 60 SRW axle and the 27775 Accuride wheels would come out to 72 3/4" to the outside of the tires. This would be tight, but might work. Additionally, if I can make wheel adapters that are smaller than 3 inches thick, say 2.5 inches, then I can get the outer tire width down to below 72". I think this would work,,, at least that's my plan for the future.
Hope that helps.
Jon
