Front Suspension Install – 1937 Dodge Truck

Most of the rear suspension is put together, just waiting on the coil overs to arrive. So in the mean time I decide to weld in some stand ins for them and move on to installing the front suspension.

First task we getting the truck turned around, last time it was moved it was nothing but part of the frame and the cab. This time is was much heavier and without a proper jack it was a bit tricky to get the front down to the floor and onto some car dolly’s.

It was fairly easy to move it around once it was strapped in and with help from my awesome wife. It also forced me to clean up the shop a little bit which is always a good thing.

With the truck turned around I has to remount the front sheet metal one more time to figure out where the front wheels should land. I was currently working with a 104 inch wheel base but I wanted to confirm.

Roughly put back together I could mock up the front cross member from Scott’s Hotrods and figure out where everything fit. It was at this point I thought about moving the wheel base forward 5-6 ” to bring the front tires closer to the front of the grill. I figured I could mount the cross member just behind the front grill. So I measured off my rear axle on both sides and marked it out, 109″ is what I was gonna run.

The guide provided by Scotts says to mock up one side nad make sure your center lines up where you want it. So I had to mount the upper and lower A arms and bolt the spindle in. This allowed me to see exactly where the wheels would fall. I was pretty happy with this setup. The next day I decided to go through the rest of the setup just to see what else needs to bolt on. SWAY BAR!! oh crap this mounts in front of the cross member and is probably going to hit the grill shell, sure enough it was so far forward I didn’t even have frame to bolt it too. So I have to push the cross member back. Right back to my original 104″ thought I had when I started the build.

So after shifting the entire setup back 5″, marking and leveling everything again. I can now swing my sway bar up to the frame, I will be hacking up the grill shell at a later date so right now the sway bar and the current mounts of the grill fall in the same spot, so for mock up purposes I just shifted the sway bar back a touch but I have more than enough room to make it work with the grill mounts out of the way.

Now I have my position I have stripped the cross member down and removed the hood from the truck. I need to prep the metal and burn in the cross member to the frame.

Once that is all done I just need to figure out where are all these parts that Scott’s sent me go. Probably going to have to you tube a few links and re read the guidelines provided a few more times.