I appreciate all the helpful info guys. Any alignment issues with any of this?

 

Not if you mark teh bolts and tighten them back up before you leave the track.

 

You should also get some tei rod sleeves. I run them on my Duramax. Superdisel on the Dieselplace sells them.

 

I know the diesel guys swear by them, but I have never heard of any gas guys bending tie rods, of course not very many gas trucks leaving the line with 30+lbs of boost and 1000ft/lbs of torque

 

The rods will deflect, and toe in before they bend. So even though they don't bend, or break they are still deflecting. The sleeves will stop the flexing of the tie rod. My 07 classic LBZ Dmax cutts a 1.78 60' @ mid 13's up at this altitude. Im leaving at 6-7LBS. The truck is bone stock except for a PPE program, and Tie rod sleeves.

 

i dont think you need the sleves on the gas trucks. not sure why but no one is breaking them.

if you like the look of a lower truck do like the others have said. get rid of the lift blocks and drop the front a little(permanantly). that will help a ton. if you keep making it faster and want it to launch even smoother you can limit the front travel with some limiters. i welded some in on my truck and it made a huge diference. i can pull 1.7x's and sometimes a high 1.6 on the stock firejunk tires. when it does peal out it is nice and smooth and easy to control. a 4 wheel drift but no jumping around.

 

I just got back home to texas a minute ago. Thanks for your replies. I'll investigate the tr sleeves. I actually like the higher ride height if I can keep it, but I can change it only if I have to. Just how would I limit front end travel exactly?

 

if you want to keep it high it is going to hard to get a launch that isn't all over the place. the sleves might help but i dont think the tie rods are flexing much. a combo of the center link moving up when the tie rods push on it, the tie rods moving a little, the ball joints moving around a little and mostly the poor alignment when the wheels are hanging that low. the wheels are toed in so they are fighting each other.

 

So could I try to limit first and see if that helps much, then if I end up lowering 2" will I need to change my shocks?

 

I had a friend who had this problem with his syclone and what he did was limit the front as you've already heard and he put air bags in the back(like the ones used to level your truck when towing). He would air them to the max before launching and it would limit the weight transfer of the truck from the front to rear,so the truck wasn't trying to lift the front wheels on launch and all four tires where grabbing traction more equally. It made all the difference in the world for him and those airbags are only like 250 bucks with the compressor and remote gauge so you can fill them from the cab.