Ford 1/2 ton vans have 2.5" wide rear leaf springs. When swapping in a heavier duty axle, it will generally have 3" wide spring pads (except for GM axles). This means I needed to add 3" wide spring hangers and shackles since I didn't feel like making my own (and I want the OEM look). This set is from a 1985 E-350. Notice how they had to be placed lower on the frame to correct the pinion angle and to avoid the use of rear lift blocks. To keep things sturdy, a 3/16" piece of angle iron is bolted on the bottom frame rail and to the bottom of the hanger. Also, only 2 of the original 2.5" hanger's holes lined up with the 3" hanger's.

The frame on the '85 E-350 was huge (tall) which placed the front spring hanger a few inches below the 1/2 ton frame even though the top is still flush with the top rail. Only one hole lined up this time. So we had to weld up the useless holes on the hanger and drill new ones to match the frame. Again you'll notice a piece of 3/16" angle iron bolted to the hanger and the bottom frame rail for rigidness.

This is the part where I mentioned earlier how Ford re-inforced the frame around the hangers, but we cut that out when moving the gas tank back. Since more side-to-side stress will be applied to the front hangers, a 3" channel was welded across with a notch for driveshaft clearence.

The "hanger crossmember" also added a place to weld a 1/8" thick plate to hold the E-brake cables. The original E-brake cables ran through the holes where the gold irridite grade 8 bolts run through, but with the amount of lift they proved to be too short at the stock location and so new holes were drilled a few inches lower.

Take your time with this part, it is important to set up the front axle very carefully to keep good steering/ suspension geometry. The front frame horns on the Ford vans are too wavy to weld spring hangers directly to. Instead we used a piece of 3/8" thick 6"x6" tubing and cut it into the shape of a "U" and bolted it in various locations to give a sturdy place to weld to. 3/8" is really too much, and we tried to buy 1/4" but ironically the steel shop sold us the 3/8" piece for less than the 1/4"! Guess they had too much to drink the weekend of July 4th!

Here is the passenger side front shackle. This is where the '86-'97 Dana 60's pay off! The newer axles can have a shackle made to fit right under the frame rail. With the '78-'79 axles, the spring perch width is narrow and resulted in making a sturdy tube to run along the inside of the frame to mount the shackle. Since Ford made it nice to box in the frame around the radius arm mount, we figured it would be a good place to mount the shackle to.

Make sure you allow the shackle to move enough through the compression of the spring. Notice how the shackle is almost following the arc of the spring, this will change quickly once another 1000lbs or so are added.