Cross over steer confusion

[Kevinr678]

I ended up scoring a 78 F250 Dana 44 with flat top knuckles which I knew was needed for cross over steer on my 95 K1500 SAS. I can't however find hardly any kits for Ford knuckles, only Chevy. I found one on WFO Concepts but it's about $800 and includes a new knuckle and requires a core knuckle to be sent in. On the other hand they advertise a service to take your 77-79 Ford flat top and machine and tap it for $65 or $50 if other steering parts are bought. This leads me to believe there's nothing wrong with using this Ford knuckle for cross over but I'd have to go a non-kit route and buy all parts seperate. If this is the case would someone mind helping me with a list of parts I need for this and possibly links? For some reason the whole crossover steering concept is confusing to me.

 

[OnlyOneDR]

If it is the true flat-top 44 knuckle from an F-250 then you will see extra material on the inside of the knuckle (they look like bumps in the casting) where the drilled and tapped holes would go when machining in from the top, also a large unmachined portion of casting on the top of the knuckle. These work exactly the same as the GM/Jeep knuckle. Send it in to PartsMike or one of the other outfits for machining and you can use all the standard Dana 44 high-steer parts.

PartsMike mill/drill service: http://www.partsmike.com/index.php?crn=219&rn=1377&action=show_detail

Then visit ORD's website, they have complete kits intended for use with the Ford D44 on a SAS'd truck:

http://offroaddesign.com/catalog/Dana44CrossoverKits.htm

As far as confusion goes, all the crossover steering accomplishes is changing the drag link to connect to the passenger side knuckle. In an old-style GM steering setup the box swung the pitman arm forward and aft and pushed/pulled a tall curved steering arm on the top of the driver's side knuckle. That works fine for small amount of suspension movement but is more prone to bump steer. With a lift the system design limits show up and steering just does not work right anymore since the short drag link will not sit level. Dropped pitman arms and raised steering arms can help straighten things out but only add to stress on the box and the knuckle, and they still only work well within a somewhat short range of up/down motion. By "going crossover" you swap the steering box out for one that swings left/right and install a drag-link from the box to the passenger knuckle. The greatly lengthened drag-link can tolerate a lot more up/down movement from the suspension without drastically changing the steering geometry. Bump steer is diminished and you get better range of steering motion at the extreme ends of wheel travel.