nytrdr24
+1y
aye, still green i see, but that's alright...
first thing to do is park the truck on a level surface, & put it on jack stands on the frame front & rear. on the rear you can remove the wheels to make working with the axle a little lighter & easier. loosen the u-bolts on both sides, only remove one side @ a time, you'll take the block & put it inbetween the axle & the leaf spring. then put the new longer u-bolts on and slightly tighten them, then do the other side. once you have both sides complete, you will torque them down to spec (which i think is like 75 ft. lbs.) in a criss-cross pattern......now if you want more drop than what just the blocks will give you, while the axle is loose, put an extra set of jack stands under it to raise it up off the leafsprings. take a pair of c-clamps & put them on either side of the the centering pin on the leafsprings (bolt that goes thru the leafs in the center). remove the centering pin, and the clamps that hold the spring pack together, then you will slowley let off pressure on the c-clamps letting the leaf pack expand. you'll keep the long spring with the bushing eyes, the next longest spring, and the short overload spring that was on the very bottom of the spring pack, put the these three leafs together using your c-clamps, and put the centering pin back in and tighten it down, now youll want to put the clamps that holds the leaf pack together back on either side of the centering pin to keep the leafs together, then remove the c-clamps. set the lowering block on the newly put together leaf pack, ease the axle down onto the leafs, while your at this point, you'll want to take the bumpstop & shave it down a little, and put it back on the axle, then put the new u-bolts on and tighten down as described above. the next thing to do would be to remove the old shocks & put the new ones on the rear, this is no more than undoing two nuts on each shock, pull the old one off, and put a new one on.
replace the wheels, and torque the lug nuts to spec aswell in a criss-crosspattern.
now for the front, no point in removing the wheels here just yet. attached to the lower control arm is a bar that runs toward the rear of the truck, this is the torsion bar, at the end of it is a bolt that goes into a "t" shaped attachment that is hooked onto the frame crossmember. you will not tighten this bolt as you say, but rather loosen it....these bars act like a spring, more tension on them, the higher your truck will set, less tension on them the lower the truck will sit.....if you just want to lower it a little and haven't removed and leafs from the rear, you can just loosen this bolt some.....now be sure that you turn the bolts on both sides the same amount of times, otherwise the truck will have a "gangsta lean". now if you did remove some leafs in the rear, you'll probably want to reindex the torsions....to do this, you will find the point that the torsion bars attach to the control arm, make a mark on the torsion bar and the housing that the torion bar goes into that is attached to the control arm. this is your reference mark. note that end of the torsion bars is splined and this mark will help assure that you turn the bars the same amount of splines on both sides of the truck to prevent that gangsta lean. next you will loosen the tension bolt on the other end of the torsion bar till you can take the torsion bar off the half moon key. pull the torsion bar out of the end connected to the control arm, and on the drivers side, you will want to turn it one or two spline teeth in the clockwise direction, on the passenger side of the truck, you will turn it the same amout as the drivers side, except in the counter-clockwise direction. now comes the fun part, you will need a pipe wrench with a long handle, have a buddy apply pressure to the torsion bar so that you can get the half moon key back onto the torsion bar (be very careful while doing this as you are putting tension back onto the suspension, if it slips, you can get hurt) now with the torsion bar hooked back to the half moon key, you will want to tighten that bolt back up, not all the way, but you need to count the turns that it is tightened up. do this to the other side and tighten the same amount. now take the truck off of the jackstands, and see what the stance of the truck looks like, if too high, you will want to jack the truck back up, and loosen the bolts some, if too low, you will want to tighten them up some more.....keep in mind to do the same amount on both sides......once you have the ride height like you want then you can swap out the front shocks.....jack the truck back up, remove the front wheels, you will remove the stock shock, and replace it with the lowered one you have, and while you have that appart, you can shave some off of the front bumpstop as well to improve the amount of travel in your suspension. replace the tires, and carry her for a spin & injoy your new outlook on life, lowered style