Front / rear track width

[BuzzKing]

I am in the planning stages of a full rebuild / restomod of my 1968 F100 short bed truck. I will be doing a mustang II style IFS in the front and a 4-link in the rear for the suspension. I will likely used Scott's Hotrods, but that's another story. My current rear end is a Dana 60.3. While its in good shape its not a very efficient rear end and I will likely need to change the gear ratio anyway. So I will be replacing it with a Ford 9" rear end. I will also take the opportunity to match the front and rear tire widths as opposed to the narrow rear on these trucks stock. I also want to get the wheels as wide as possible for better handling. I will be lowering the truck 3-4" and will hopefully install a Coyote 5.0 and manual 6 spd tranny. So I need to figure out the wheel mount to wheel mount widths for both the front and the rear.

The technical article on this site for the 1967 shows a track width of 60.4 inches. The diagram suggests the measurement is from the center of the tire to the center of the tire - which I understand is the technically appropriate way to measure track width. It does not specifically state if this is front or rear. I also don't know the specs on the original rims so I don't know how this translates to hub to hub. On another forum a poster indicated that a "Dealer Fact Manual" - whatever that is - stated a front track width of 64.4 inches for 1967-1972 F100 2WD. I have seen multiple listings, on different suspension sites, for rear end widths as 61.25 inches for hub to hub width.

This weekend I measured the wheel mounting surface to wheel mounting surface on both the front and rear of my truck using straight edges and levels. I am sure my measurements are not exact but the are very close. I measured 64.5 inches in the front and 61.125 inches in the rear. The rear measurements seems to match with what posted around the interwebs. The front measurement seems to match with the "dealer fact book." But I don't see any way to get a track width of 60.4 inches as stated in the technical article unless the stock wheels were extremely offset / backspaced.

Can anyone clear up the confusion or add some insight?

What is the widest front width that works using 9" front tires and 4 inch lowered?

Based on these measurements I plan to use a rear end width of 61 inches with 10" wide tires and then go with ~63 inches hub to hub in the front with 9" tires to get fairly equally tire width and still fit in the wheel wells - using the same offset and backspace on the front and rear rims off course.

[Aerocoupe]

So the Fatman Fabrications Mustang II style front suspension lists at 60-1/2" hub to hub. I have not talked to them but my assumption is that "hub to hub" means the face of the hub that the back of the rotor flushes up to. You then need to add the thickness of the rotor times two to that dimension. Regardless of who's IFS kit you will install you need to know what their hub to hub measurement is and then figure out what the offset of the wheel you will have up front. Once you get that figured out then you now know what wheel you will be using in the rear as well being you want to be able to rotate the tires.

With the stock rear end in the truck you can drop a plumb bob off the inner lip of the rear wheel well and measure that distance to the face of the drum or face of the disc brake rotor. From here you should be able to calculate if the existing rear end is too narrow or too wide for the wheel you want to use and either narrow the 9" you have or find a wider one and go from there.