LOL I can immagine 5 ton axles on a cj, horrendous overkill. and hi Kyle, I'm N4ISF.
I'm inclined to try it as soon as I can find time to work on it. it's a 2WD truck now and was a refrigerated delivery truck before I took the box off and put a flatbed on it. But it seems to have been built with a delivery truck type drive train and the rear axle is too high of a ratio to really pull the load a good ton truck should be able to. I need it to pull 5-7 tons on a 3 axle gooseneck and it won't do it. I do it with my 3/4 ton 4x4 dodge but last time out the driveway I popped the driveshaft out. (those 3/4 ton dodges used half ton driveshafts, I've popped it several times) and a 2WD truck won't even pull a loaded trailer out our drive, a half mile up a steep hill on gravel. Anyway, I have availible a transfer case out of another simular duece dump truck that broke something, won't shift into low range, (the good one from the parts truck is going in the dump truck) then if I can fix it It'll be good for the ford conversion. I may put the 366 chevy gas engine and transmission out of the other dump truck in it, and either retire the old chevy truck or put a 305 in it that's laying here.
One thing I'm concerned about on the current F350 drivetrain is the u joints, they look no larger than the ones in the 3/4 ton dodge that I keep loosing. I think I'll have to upgrade it anyway to do a reliable job of what I intended when fixing it. My dodge is the main work truck and it's wearing out too fast due to the strain that gets put on it, (afterall it's an '81 model, but still has only 130,000 or so on it, I got it in '95 with 85,000 on it and it was a good tight truck then.) I need to put the refrigerated box off the F350 on a short gooseneck and have a good truck to pull it back to where the harvest happens, and then out to where ever it goes.
To get a little perspective here. I live on 80 acres of TN mountainside, old mtn farm we bought 23 years ago, been harvesting timber ever sence a little at a time for a backup income with clearing a few acres in mind, I did a few tries at vegetable production, one of those tries resulted in buying a dozer to clear land. But now it's getting where I've taken most of the high grade timber that's worth the time, and ready to switch more seriously to growing food. In the process we were able to obtain the old refrigerated delivery truck with vegetable harvest in mind, Then decided to seperate the truck and box to make the truck more usable, and put the box on a trailer. Now, because the terrien around here is anything but level, and we're always trying to pull loads out of muddy, steep and not so easy to got out of places. The dodge is wearing out and a good 4x4 truck is almost mandatory to get anything done. Being dissatisfied with modern vehicle technology, deciding to build my own vehicles out of good old parts rather than buy anything newer. I was discussing it with my brother and he's of a mind to see the conversion of the F350 to 4x4 with the military parts as a good move to make.
After we moved here, (when I was 20) I started fooling around with offroad driving here and there with this and that, took a subaru brat to crazy places it shouldn't have gone, then got a very old chevy truck with WWII dodge military axles and used it, ended up turning it into a log skidder with a rear winch and roll bars. Took that pleasure offroading several times besides all the timber it yanked out. broke it and repaird it several times. Got the dodge truck and have used it for all kinds of stuff, mostly work but some wild pleasure trips into the mountains and gulfs. Now I gotta keep working and thinkin of switching my seemingly necessary for work 4x4 habit to heaver duty military gear just because I keep overworking the other stuff. It's either that or back off and use horses. While I do have a few and like that idea, it has it's disadvantages. Just to get around our land and do something to make it make me a livin takes something better than a normal 2 wheel drive vehicle if I gotta stick with the horseless carriage.
