just narrow your rear end, I narrowed mine 4 inches, 2 on each side, I just cut the housing and ordered some shorter axle shafts from sutton engineering it was like 300 bucks for the shafts but now I can tuck just about anything.
I'm pretty sure the pre-02 Dodges dont' have the same speed sensor. I also think they are just as wide as ours. You could order one axle from Moser and just shorten one side. THat would be cheaper than shortening it a 1/2 on both. The ford rearend will work but you wont be able to get the stock speed sensor. Then you have to deal with brakes also. My axles were like $360 shipped. That was including me shipping them my axles. Then $150 to shorten the housing and setup a new set of gears.
do you know off the top of your head how much off center pumpkin is? I really had to think about your "just shorten one side" DAZED me for about 10 minutes!
The pumpkin is centered on the axle but the engine and tranny is not centered in the truck. The Engine and tranny is moved towards the passenger side a couple inches. Probably to help with clearance for the steering shaft and frame torque from exceleration. Some engineering chit. LOL But I think you could shorten the passenger side 1 inches and not have any problems. Save you some money and be less cutting and welding. Good luck with it man.
if you just shortened one side, that means you'd have to change the position of the axle under the truck. a half inch is a lot when it comes to alignment and wouldn't this cause a lot of problems?
Now that I look at his profile i know the truck is already linked, therefor he would have to change the link mounts of narrow it each amount on each side. When you shorten one side you still center the axle under the truck. As long as the axle is centered then you shouldn't have any alignment issues. Now if he shortened one side and didn't recenter the axle then yes he would have alignment issues. It really depends on what he would rather do. Go through the work of changing the 4-link mounts or paying the extra money to shorten both sides. I'm cheap so i would redo the mounts and save the extra $200.