Rears up front with springs from a 84-88, just get ones with a lift. Axle placement is forward 1”-2” or so, doing this to my 84’ and to be honest 84’ and 96’ didn’t change much.
The f250 springs would be fine but you have to take several springs out of it cause if the weight difference.. really a guessing game and your right in the end likely wouldn’t have been spring rate exactly as you wanted.. would either be too stiff or too soft.. most sas swaps you do need to relocated the radiator usually about 1” higher.. not back. For the crossmember.. the way your doing it cutting out the frame to the body mounts then rebox it with 1/8” is what I’d do.. you will want a hole somewhere in that area though.. the reason there is gaps is to allow water out and air in and keep the frame from rusting from the inside out from condensation. I’d box it and fill a few 1/8” holes in the face and underside. Ok based on what you didn’t don’t know how this finished yet. What you should do is not run those horizontal welds off the internal bracing of the frame.. you should cut some steel and make tabes top and bottom and weld then as a bridge between the frame and the cross member. But all in all I’m not sas conversion expert just a metal worker.. what you’ve done so far is fine. Not 100% the way I’d do it but more then fine and I’d have full confidence in wheeling this so far. Once exception.. that bubble isn’t a bubble it’s slag trapped inside the weld (slag which is high carbon deposits.) very bad.. that drivers side weld is really really bad cause of all the carbon build up in it it’s just so bad you can’t see the Slag pockets like you can that one on the passenger side.. when this happens you really should use a hard grinding wheel and v notch the joint cutting about 50% of the weld back out and lay a new bead down that grove. It might not seem like much but too much carbon in the steel is what sank the titanic.. not sure what your welding setup is.. my preference which is overkill for material this thin but super cheap compared to most typical mig setups and way stronger.. is flux core wire with co2 gas.. that gray top color of the bead and kinda orangish color around where the bead ends on the two pieces is signed of high carbon impurities in the joint. I seen you have a bottle setup and I would guess you’re using typical 80/20 argon like most people who mig.. that’s a worthless setup unless you’re in a shop with zero air movement. Flux core wire and co2 gas you can weld 3” plate in a hurricane and still have a clean joint. That’s how buildings are build, that’s how submarines are made.. it’s the top of the line when it comes to mig welding steel and getting strong joints wo impurities. It’s way cheaper on both wire and gas for a setup too. Tbh though for this I’d just run 045 flux wo gas and be done..
![Tacoma Solid Axle Swap [Part 5] - Spring Hanger & Cross-member](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
