Just went for a test drive....I didnt die and nothing broke!

 

LOL, That is a good thing right?

 

More important, How did it ride?

 

Good from what I could tell, I just went around the block for the engine break in, seems to handle speed bumps pretty well.

 

Sweet. Sounds like I will need a heavier 7" spring than the 1000's. at 6,000 pounds and a 52/48 weight distribution that a touch over 3000 lbs over the front end.

Being that I can not measure my truck right now. Do you happen to know the distance from the lower A arm mount to the lower shock mount and from the lower A arm mount to the lower ball joint? I'm deploying today and never got a chance to measure this stuff.

 

Well it depends on the shocks you use...if you dont want to preload you probably want to try some 1200-1300s.

Best I could measure, measuring perpendicular to the centerline of the truck, its 10" from the LCA mount to the shock mount, and 6.5" from the shock mount to the ball joint.

 

bravo, very well done kit looks great. imo i would consider your top mount brace/bracket a must ! the stock shock tower wasnt meant or designed to take that kind of force or abuse and would probably end up bending or ripping off imo. great job !

 

I bought some of the stud conversions to mess with and its pretty much exactly what I thought, takes off 1.5" of mounting distance...





What this means is you could go 1.5" lower in the front by simply changing the top mount, which would put my front fender height at roughly 30.5" which is pretty low IMO. Alternatively you could run the slightly longer ds303 and have more travel and less spring while sitting level.

Also, the "bearing" style mounts are not very good. I talked to qa1 and they are only rated for a 650lb spring, and this is why after about 10 miles:



I ordered some replacement steel bearings for $6 each. He also highly recommended I use a chassis bump stop so I got a universal one off summit for $8 to test out.

 

I am getting close to pulling the trigger on this but I have a few questions:


OK so the stud conversion I assume is long enough to make it through your upper mount and the stock perch correct ?? (can you post up links/details for the stud conversion).

Also do you think you would have rather run another brand of coil-over besides the QA1? I know they make good stuff just wondering if AFCO or some other brand would be a better choice for our heavy applications??

 

Yea its long enough, but you need to leave off the top bushing or at least trim it down because the bolt isnt that long. I posted a part number in the first post.

I picked the qa1s because they were really the first ones I looked at and had one with the right ride height. Ride height will be the limiting factor, especially for guys wanting to go really low. I just looked at afco and it looks like they may have something that will work. To sit level, ride height looks to be around 9.5" with the procomp adapters or 11" with the stud tops.