36 Ford truck on Ranger

[Bamamav]

Seems like lately I've done more building going down the road than in the shop!

[MercuryMac]

Well Guys, the do-over is a livable situation, but when the do over doesn't work then I get annoyed. Patience, patience; ya ya I know.
Anyhow, I did get away from it for a while and decided on another do-over, so the hanger is flipped yet again, [fourth position, same as the second]. All the bolts are back in and tightened [a horrible job]. I'm going to put a car lowering kit in under the springs and raise the truck body 2". The exhaust pipe is rehung and the tail light bracket is rebolted on.
In the first picture you'll see why bolting and unbolting this hanger was almost impossible. The box floor is very close on top, gas tank is very close on the inside of the frame and the box side and fender is in the road on the outside. I hope my camera has no audio, because there might be some of you that are faint-hearted RRR's.
The second pic is a Speed-way lowering kit.
Bam, that would be Imagineering, that is, if you stayed on topic, not like I do sometimes.

[MercuryMac]

The left hand tail light is all together now, wired and tested. pic 1
The Speedway lowering kit is all in and tightened up. pic 2
After I put the back bumper on and align it again I will lower the truck off the jack-stands and check for height and more importantly suspension travel.
My list is getting smaller, by golly.

[Torchie]

Looks good.
A smaller list is great.
Torchie.

[Dirtyrat]

Looks like you got it handled with the lowering blocks!
I imagine you could use nuts welded on the inside of the frame so that all you have to do is pull the bolts out of the spring hanger bracket as well, that might make it a little easier to work on in the future.

Would be cool to see some stance pics now that you lowered the rear some!

[MercuryMac]

Dirtyrat, If I wasn't so arrogant to think that I wouldn't have any do-overs I could have welded those nuts in the frame. I could have done all this fiddling around now, with one eye shut.
When I was building this truck I tried to think of everything that had to be done, while it was easy, before the cab, box, engine or fenders were on. That helped quite a lot. It didn't allow for screw-ups that had to be done over, though.
I did take a before picture with a measuring tape so today when it's down on the floor again I will take an after pic.
Keep on tinkering.

[MercuryMac]

Well, today went sideways. My list wasn't getting smaller very quickly. When I let the truck down to the floor and bounced each corner so that it sought its right level, I found out that I have one spring weaker than the other on the back. The back end sat cock-eyed. Again I'm glad there's no audio portion in this thread.
I went outside and shoveled some more snow off the shop roof. While I was not thinking hotrods, a possible solution hit me; put another leaf in the weak side. I hunted around for a leaf that I knew I had and finally started digging snow away from where it could be outside. There it was. So I brought it indoors, took off my left hand wheel, undid my brand new U-bolts, split the centrebolt nut and took the bottom spring leaves out of there. When I was cleaning up the threads on the centrebolt I discovered that it was fine thread 11 millimetres. I had no die to clean the threads up and possibly no new nut. I found a nut, ---eventually. Everything went back together quite well, and the truck was reunited with the floor. It leveled out the truck. I think I gained a little over 2" [picture 1&2] and the back end is a bit too high now, as you'll see in [picture 3&4].

[MercuryMac]

After Imagineering quite a bit, I decided to mount my spare tire in the middle of the box near the front and bolt it down, so it didn't scar up too much of the box sides or floor. I put a 2"x2" about sixteen inches long under the floor boards and 7&1/2" bolt up through everything including a 4" tall piece of round stock [firewood]. [pic 1]
The tire just fits over that. [pic 2]
I have made a retainer and a butterfly nut to hold it all down. The retainer is unpretty at the moment so you're not getting a looksee.
I hope to throw the jack and a folding wheel wrench in the dish of the wheel. Maybe a cover too.

[MercuryMac]

My conscience would bother me if I just went out and bought a new wheel wrench so I had to come up with an old looking one and one that fit nicely inside an inverted spare wheel. Well, I found some of an old wheel wrench and crank combo and engineered it to work for me. I had to cut an air socket in half and weld it onto the wheel-nut end because it was for a bigger size nut, [had to be 3/4"]. That and heating up the two ninety degree bends and straightening them, one a little and one completely straight, made a usable wheel wrench out of an old multi-tool. I found a jack that's quite small, and still worked. You know those long 5/16" crank handles that were made to steer a jack a way under something and then crank it up forcing the rear end housing up, well, I've got one of them hidden away behind the rear bumper.
pic 1 is my two part wheel wrench.
pic 2 is my wrench and the jack placed in their nest.

[Torchie]

Nice Imagineering.
Torchie.