The 33 x12.5r17 wide inch tires will fit perfectly on the factory 7.5 inch rim. They clear the upper control arms by about a finger width. As long as properly inflated they will never hit the uppers. I rebuilt my front end entirely which seemed to level the truck out, no rubbing on the frame, fender or bumper and have full lock. I have 3.55 gears and the drivability is fine. 1st gear can’t even tell they are there. Second and third you have to wind it out to about 2500 to get some decent acceleration. 4th and over drive you can tell they are there. Getting on the gas in those higher gears around 40 plus it is sluggish but will downshift to 3rd to get back up to speed. It did this before but it’s more pronounced with the larger and heavier tires. 1.5 in larger and 20 ish pounds heavier. You can tell they are there but drivability it’s definitely fine with them.

 

Nice truck!

That is a lot of knobby...... I fantasized about putting a tire like that on my truck. But reality set in....... I just went with a 3 peak Firestone Destination AT2.

I have the base stock steels. They are 17x7.5 Good to know they fit.

 

Really nice truck! Has it spent it's life in Illinois?

What all did you replace in the front end? Did you replace the lower control arms or just the ball joints? I'm looking at replacing a bunch front end parts this summer and trying to decide just how far I want to go.

 

It lived in Washington for 23 years then had one Midwest winter where I washed it once a week, gonna go south with it so no more salt. I did upper control arms, lowers ball joints, wheel hubs, idler arm, pitman arm, shocks, tie rods, end links, and center link. Took me and a buddy about four days to do but we were kinda dragging. If you and a buddy do it and are working faster you could probably do it in two or three days. Induction heaters and a blow torch are good friends. Use a pitman arm puller to break the lower and upper ball joints from the spindle, mine were on there good. Trucks got 250k and drove fine but that front end was SHOT. Shocks didn’t rebound at all, half grease boots were torn, all ball joints were floppy and needed swapped for the big graps. All the stuff is grease able moog problem solver. Wasn’t cheap but on rock auto it wasn’t awful to get good parts and do it right once.

 

Sounds like you've really taken great care of it. Living in the South sure helps the vehicles last longer (except for those crazies that live along the coast ).

Thanks for the advice on replacing the front end parts. Except for the outer tie rod ends and the idler arm, mine still has the original parts. It still handles pretty well, but the SQUEAKS! It drives me crazy to have the windows down (which the dogs demand). I've assembled NOS Motorcraft parts (which it looks like the later versions are greaseable - I guess Ford finally came around on that). Wasn't planning on replacing the pitman arm (just the center link), have to think about that some more I guess.

I also hadn't thought about the wheel hubs (CV axles?). But I'd be surprised if it has over 10K total 4WD driving miles. Something else to investigate.

I'm sure you got the work done a lot quicker than I will. I'm fortunate that the truck isn't a daily driver anymore, so it's OK if it sits for a while.

 

In this style of ifs the cv axles turn whenever the wheels turn the only locking part is in the diff and transfer case. My oem ford cvs look fine, as long as you don’t touch the keys the oem ford ones last forever. I’d just look at all the rubber to be sure it’s not dry rotted before you install it. My pitman arm needed it as it popped going on non flat turns. It was also as bad as the rest of my front end. Pulling it requires some thought though. The old dust caps on my wheel hubs used to rattle and jingle and drive me nuts but when I put them back on I made sure they were tight and they don’t move around at all. I needed to rent a ton of stuff tools but I just returned all of it.