I have the Sterling 10.25 rear axle ( 7 Lug ) and was thinking of changing the axle shafts so I could have a more common 6-lug or even 8 lug.
The problem with going to 6-lug is that the 9.75 axles are 34 spline and mine is 35 spline.
If I go to a 3/4 ton 8-bolt I can change the rear, but not sure how to get 8 lug front hubs...
I don't really want to run 6-bolt front and 8-bolt rear, for understandable reasons.

Any ideas?

 

Should be able to get some custom axles

 

^ was looking for a cheaper solution...lol

 

Get a 9.75 from a junk yard and change to the 6 lug front hubs is your cheapest option I know of

 

^except that my 10.25 has 4.10 gears in it, and 9.75s only came with 3.73s as the low gear.

I think I'm going to talk to a 4x4 shop and see about resplining some 6-lug shafts or somehow attaching a 6lug hub to my 35spline shaft.

Though it would be pretty badass to have 8-lugs too.....

 

why exactly do you want 6 or 8 lugs? for wheel choices? if so it would be a lot cheaper just to get blank wheels and have a shop drill the bolt pattern for you.

 

Actually the fx4 trucks had 4.10 as an option

 

Exactly that. Its almost impossible to find 7 lug wheels anywhere.

 

Thinking on this some more....
The 250/350s came with Sterling 10.5 8-lugs. Is there any reason I can't do a straight axle swap and get 8-lugs?

I would have to figure out what to do with the front hubs also, since the SDs have the solid axle and the 150s dont, unless its possible to swap the front hub assemblys and keep 4wd. I'd even be ok with going to manual hubs

 

you are going to spend 10k+ to get 8 lugs? just buy another truck

 

How did you come up with $10k??? I was planning on finding a wrecked SD and yanking the axles out from under that. Even a new axle isn't $10,000

 

putting a solid axle under there isn't a bolt on you have alot more than just the axle to figure it out.


coil overs, links, brakes, steering,brackets, driveshaft etc.

3/4 ton and 1 ton axles aren't cheap, every body and their sister want them to swap into their offroad toy.

go look at OGterrors build, trimbles. IIRC ogterror is in his for nearly 35k, trimble did his cheap for 4-5k and ripped it all out and had to re-do it because it was crap

edit: can you do it cheaper than 10k, yes. but can you do ALL the work yourself?

 

I'm talking about the rear axle...not doing a SAS. Egoterror has more money than brians and trimble had a huge amount of lift and that cummins as well.

The rear 10.25 and 10.5 Sterling axles should be direct replacements, I'm just unsure of any sensors or if there's something else I'm missing...

The front I'm leaving IFS, just trying to figure out if I can fab up the 250 hubs or need to have some F150 hubs machined for the 8x170 bolt pattern.

 

you could always go have wheel spacers/adapters made? not my favorite method but it'd do the job.

 

I haven't heard anything good about spacers...I thought about them, but heard too many storys about them breaking or getting screwed up. Maybe if I lived in a city and never ventured off pavement they'd get by, but not in Alaska lol