Made this port to share the process of this axle swap with you guys, gonna be a wall of text but here's all what I did
i bought a set of 4x4 dually axles from a guy, came out from under a 1995 F350 CCLB there's a pic of the donor axles in the bed of the truck they'll end up under
I bought a 4"/2" lift level. Lifted the front 4" and the rear 2" so the truck would sit level afterward. $550 from rough country $110 delivery.
Installing them was a pain, didn't have a hoist to use so I had to fashion some stantions to set jack stands on to hold it high enough to pull the axles and put the lifted ones under.
I had to buy new longer brake lines, new springs with overload sprigs attatched, and extended sway bar links
A1997 F250 actually doesn't have sway bars, so I had to rob the brackets off of the old teuck. Didn't manage to get the front ones, so I had to fashion my own out of some scrap I had lying around. That was the hardest part, really.
Removing the TTB was relatively straight forward, installed the drop Trac bar bracket in its place, courtesy of rough country. Had to also installed a 4" drop Pittman arm for the steering.
Finally got around to hokking up the sway bars and putting on the overload brackets last night. Getting the overloads off of the old frame was a challenge. They are hot riveted on. My frame had a ll the holes for them, they were just empty.
the axles I bought weren't actually dually axles. Ford dint make a CCLB dually in 4x4 until 1999 all CCLB dually that are 4x4 were modified SRW trucks. Centurion, waldoch, and a few other companies would buy them and put spacers on them at the customers request to make them a dually. That doesn't matter for the front axle, as the front axles are identical for a dually and a SRW the only difference is those dually spacers I posted a pic of. The rear axle however had a 3" spacer inside the duals to make it wide enough to run dually rims. This isn't what I wanted, so I sourced an axle out of a 1986 F350 2wd to throw back there. The dually axle for a regular pickup is longer than a SRW axle.
I am actually running a 1.5" spacer in between the duals to fit the bigger tires I have. Didn't wanna go much wider than that, otherwise I'd lose towing capacity. Bought my spacers from www.wheeladapter.com and that is the ONLY place I will buy them. Timken steel, hub centric, bullet spacers with grade 10 lugs. 100% love Fred goesky's product.
the tag I included a picture of is so I can help you guys translate it, it's kinda hard to read but the lower left number is 4L10 whish signifies that that axle is a 4.10 gear ratio with a limited slip differential. If it just said like 3 55 there it would be an open differential in 3.55 gears. The top numbers, you can Google those and you'll find a Ford Web page that translates that into usable information. That is the axle code and gives you all the information about that axle. The 10.2 next to the gear ratio signifies that the axle is a Sterling with a 10.25" ring gear if it said 10.5 it would be a sterling with a 10.5" ring gear.
Finally I have the oldest pic I could find on this phone to kinda show a before and after.
I hope this helps and of you guys with 7.3 powerstrokes looking to swap out that TTB or convert your truck to a dually. Like I said, converting a truck with spacers does NOT make your tow capacity more. To truly convert to a dually you have to buy a dually axle and swap it under.