Here in Nova Scotia, we mostly wheel in the woods and on the powerlines, where it's overgrown, muddy, snowy and dry in the summer.
I've decided to not put a ton of money into the TTB and do a solid axle swap. I bought a set of '197x' F150 axles - High Pinion open knuckle Dana 44 and Ford 9 inch with 4.56 gears. '197x' because the rear end is stamped 73, and it has drums up front so it could be a 73..who knows.
I've previously done this same swap on a 2002 Xterra with an 8.8 and a '79 HP Dana 44, so I'm armed with some lessons learned from that project. Namely, the upper coils towers were too far inbound, so the coils had a slight angle, which ended up pushing the radius arms off the axle mounts due to sideways stress.
A few thing...