1st post! NEW PROJECT!

hello from South Dakota! (That place real close to minnesota and under canada a couple states.) lol I just picked up my first mazda b2200 on accident! Its a 1990 cab plus. My wife and i started a non profit charity group here in south dakota and this was a truck we got in a trade for a van. The guy had one truck and this happened to be it! Ive always loved these truck. Its from louisiana and has next to no rust, 5 speed. The only issue i have is the head gasket needs to be replaced. Either that or i find a lower mileage motor when i find out what all fits in it. ill see if i can get a photo up. We plan on repainting this with a nascar theme with all of our sponsors! It also needs to be lowered. Cheaper is better with us for right now on the lowering. any other ideas or pointers would be appreciated. thanks guys

heres a picture of the beast! I just realized i had a 1994 nissan pickup 4x4 that the stock rims would fit off of!

Check out the tech forum to see how to very cheaply lower these trucks. Look at lowering blocks for the rear, and possibly removing the middle leafs if you wish to go that low (keeping the main and overload/bottom leafs). For the front you will want to look at re-indexing the torsion bars and ball joint flip to keep it simple and cheap. Don't forget new shocks for your amount of drop while you're in there.

oh very cool charles thank you! I seen that some guys were taking the torsion bars completely out!? I want it to be as low as i can but still be able to haul stuff, so if i notch the rear frame i need to panel the box again and not leave it open

yes you always want to recap any cut in the frame....and for the front..if you want to still haul things keep them in we pull them out for bagging

ok i see, thanks again mazdaman82. I would like to notch the rear frame a bit, with working at a body shop we have alot of square tubing laying around, and misc. sheetmetal for making fillers for the door handles and rear tailgate handle.

make sure you have the head pressure tested b4 you put it back on they tend to crack an would piss you off to get it all back together and it smokes

nice truck by the way

It depends on what you want to haul. Me, I needed a full bed so I can haul my bikes, motors, transmisions and anything else I may get. I'm not willing to lose any bed space.

I will be building mine with the full bed in place so my notch will just be a simple pipe notch in the frame. Otherwise you can set it up with a larger notch if you don't need the entire bed. You could just lift the bed floor, or you could build a tunnel in the bed. Whatever floats your boat.

You can take the torsion bars out to lay it out on the ground, but you will have no suspension, which means a shitty ride.

yeah i want a little bit of ride quality, so maybe ill see how much lower i can get the truck by turning the torsions down. as for the bed.......i dont haul anything REALLY heavy but still need the space to haul things

you can put a small c-notch in the frame to let the axle move still and lower it a little more that way you still have a good ride...well an ok ride..lol