“ I have a I beam straight axle from the early 40's on the garage floor in s**** pile. I can guarantee you you aren't going to twist or have much more "give" in that old metal, it is rigid” Such a false statement, do some homework as suggested.
Just cut and extend the spring perch an inch, and adjust everything else accordingly. It's a suicide front end, not rocket surgery.
Weight bias he isn't going to have close to the 1530 lbs that was hanging on the front axle of a stock 40 pickup when the stock 216 was right above the axle and had a 40 lb cast iron bellhousing right behind it plus fenders, Bumper and all the other pieces adding front end weight. I'd say on the scales he has a lot closer to 1000 lbs on the front wheels. Since there is nothing show quality on the front end of that frame I think what I would co is do some cutting and carefully remove the front crossmember after taking a ton of measurements, and maybe build the new round tube front crossmember complete with suicide front perch all set up so you can move the crossmember back 1/2 to 1 inch and clean things up in the process. I'm betting that the crossmember is **** welded in and cutting the welds and doing a bit of grinder work lets you have frame ends that you can put a round tube crossmember in in a far cleaner installation and at the same time build some more attractive headlight stands. Steering, I'd probably ditch that ??? box and cut off that mount and put a Mustang style box on it with the pitman arm facing up with the pitman shaft coming out under the frame rail but one would have to figure out if you could clear the hairpins on that. Basically it needs a bit of descabbing and maybe tossing a few rats out to turn it into a decent little bobber truck.
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