Of course at this point I had already welded the perches to the axle. Drilling thru the leaf spring with a sacrificial uni bit was cake with the leaf pack torn apart. Had to get a second bit to drill thru the last leaf. Slow speed and consistent force for the win. Other than I need to buy leaf spring clamp set, its done. And the clamps are not really necessary right away.
Its kind of funny you would say you would have purchased the correct perches.... I bought mopar performance perches. There is a assumption there that failed me. But it does make sense, larger axles are normally for bigger power. Small leaf springs are not used in big power setups. And a center pin with 5/16 threads would snap under the load of big power. What I need are new leaf springs. For the time being, this is what I have until I can gain employment. I will be replacing the leaf's and shocks in the future.
There is another element to this, if you haven't had to change perches and leaf spring pins, it sucks. The hole diam in the perch is not normally provided in the specs. Its as if there is a assumption and I dont have the experience to know it. And when you try to buy a 1/2 center pin, you find out that the 1/2in thread diam is listed and not the pin diam. And of course there are several different thread and pin diam combinations. Non of which are listed, cause that would make sense I guess.
A final thought, I bought a perch kit for a Ford 8.8 first. Only to find out that I had to buy a chevy Dana 44 perch kit for my ford axle as my 8.8 came out of a ranger and had the smaller axle tube of 3.25. Explorer axles are 3.5 inch which was what was delivered as thats what I purchased. Hence my first purchase was wrong. And the company would not exchange it due to buyers fault even though their website show NO sizes on the description. Maybe a note on the 8.8 description that the kit was for large tube 8.8 out of suv's and large trucks. I finally found the mopar performance perches for the 3.25 inch tube diam as well as a u-bolt kit for the correct diam. And I elongated the new base plate holes 1/8 in inward to fit the u-bolts as finding new base plates for 3.25 was impossible. Let alone finding them with the shock mounts integrated the same as factory a-body.
Both good points. Regarding building a bushing, I dont know if I stated earlier (few weeks ago) here but my metal lathe broke trying to build a crush sleeve for the front end. Not that matters due to the required dimensions. The pin head is 1/2in (.500), the perch hole diam is 5/8in (.625), leaving a difference of 1/8in (.125). That means my sleeve wall thickness would be 1/16in (.0675). So then I could use loctite to glue it to the pin. But slip fitting it (cut slightly smaller ID, heat it up and tap it down) would not be a good idea as the sleeve would most likely fracture. I would be more likely to use a larger grade 5 bolt, turn the head down to 5/8 and partial round, and turn the shank and threads down to nominal for 5/16, then single point thread. I would be concern a grade 8 would be to tough and become brittle during the lathe work.
As far as welding up holes and re-drilling, I wouldn't want to introduce inaccuracy into the setup.
