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lowering my truck need help


Bambino

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I lowered the front from under the truck this morning.. but wanna know how can I lower the back end.. I bought a lowering block kit but it didn't really lower it ,,, i only lowered one side on the back so i dont wanna lower the other side till someone can help me out, any suggestions ??

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1/ Any lowering of the back can cause the driveshaft U joint angles to become unmatched, resulting in a groaning vibration. The lower you go the worse it gets. This is fixable by shimming the carrier bearing upwards.... just letting you know what to expect.

 

2/ Never remove leaf springs to lower a vehicle. The side to side positioning of the rear axle is achieved by the spring pack. Removing leaves will allow the differential to shift on hard corners with possible tire rub or broken springs. Removal of leaf springs lowers the spring rate. The spring rate determines how much the suspension will travel going over dips and bumps. A softer spring will travel further. A truck that is already lowered that sags closer to the pavement on bumps is a recipe for disaster.

 

3/ You can remove the more arched  leaves and replace with flatter or even stiffer leaves. Try to keep the stiffness or spring rate the same or increase it. On a 620 you can replace the leaf springs with those from a 720 4x4. They are flatter and stiffer.

 

4/ Never heat a spring to make it sag to the height you want it. This applies to coil springs too. Springs are heat treated and further heating will remove this giving you an unknown side to side match spring rate. They could possibly become brittle and fail.

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okay is it possible to to switch the leaf springs upside down to lower the truck datzenmike??

 

 

You could bolt them on upside down but first the leaf pack would have to come apart and the pin bolt that centers them on the spring perch would have to be inverted also. I have a problem with this. If you look, the top shorter springs aren't really supporting the long main spring now are they? Yes they are sort of clipped together but on bumps the top spring tends to lift downward and away from the rest of the pack. This is why leaf springs are stacked small on bottom to larger length on top so the spring increases progressivly in stiffness as the load is applied. The last thing you want is a softer spring on a lowered vehicle... it will bottom out on the road.

 

 

I've read you can remove the flat lower springs and place it on top.  After its all tightened down it will force the springs to de-arch a bit.  Or you could get the 4x4 springs mentioned before.  Or do a C notch and coilovers like I'm doing.

 

 

Yes that will work but again you are removing some of the support from underneath. That overload bar is there to pretty much stop suspension travel on severe loads or extreme suspension travel driving through dips in the road. It allows a softer spring for comfortable ride but supports heavy loads too. Placing on top removes that support so you are again lower and on softer springs... something you should try to avoid on a lowered ride.

 

Example:

You have a vehicle with the lowest part on the underside being the muffler that clears the ground by 6".Let's say on your street on the way home there is a large dip in the road over a culvert in a 50MPH zone. You blast through it every day and your truck's (or car) suspension squashes down about 3" under the sudden load. This brings the lowest part, the muffler, within 3" of the ground. No problem everything is fine and it was fun. So you reverse your springs and drop the car by 3", which by itself isn't a huge amount. So you blast through the dip in the road as usual and the body sags down under the sudden load but because the springs have been altered and the spring rate reduced, the body (and the muffler) travels 4 " on top of the 3" the vehicle was lowered. Four inches of travel does not fit into three inches of room. Even with stock springs and rate this would have been very close. The answer is a stiffer spring to resist suspension travel. Saying that all you have to do is drive slower to avoid the problem does not make it go away you still have to drive up ramped driveways.

 

 

On a lowered vehicle you want at least the same spring rate (stiffness) and ideally something stiffer.

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Your rear socks are used to being extended to a certain resting height. Once both blocks are on the shocks will need to settle some. You can speed this up by pushing down behind the axel (I jumped on the bumper a couple times). Depending on the block size you may need different shocks.

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thanks guys for the help.. nd mike thanks for all the tips.. it helped nd it doesn't viberate, I realized it did it before cuz the front was low nd the back was high.. now it jus a smooth ride .. but it hitting against my pipe and the axel so I'm going to put the shocks back on and see what that does thanks again

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Never run without shocks even if you have to get shorter ones. They are not called dampers for nothing. On a bumpy road you could end up with the springs bouncing the rear right off the ground.

 

The axle shouldn't hit the fame... there are rubber bump stops for that. Sometimes they rot off or are removed to get it lower. If the top of the axle is hitting the frame you will have to notch it. 

 

I draw the line at modifying the frame, not at all that it's unsafe or anything, just that this is extreme hard core lowering.  It's more than I'm comfortable with because the truck becomes more and more useless as it gets closer to a particular "look". Driving around on the rubber bump stops letting the tires act as a suspension is the equivalent of rice on a Honda.

 

Hey, no offense but it only looks good on your truck.  :lol:  :lol: 

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