I'm certain this has been covered before but I couldn't dig anything up. I was told by my father that I could, with some fabrication, put a ladder bar on my truck to help off the line traction, as with the 3000 stall and current gears, I'm limited to less than half throttle. Is a ladder bar even feasible and will it help?

 

yes u can build a flouting latter bar set up but why not run a set of cal-tracks
Donald

 

what is a flouting ladder bar and could you put caltracs on a lifted truck?

 

A foater would be used if you do a ladderbar set up and retain the leafsprings. The floater housing allows the axle to rotate freely while still being attached to the leafsprings packs. If you mounted the rear housing on the leaf packs like stock (riggid) and hooked up a ladderbar setup the housing would be in a serious bind and likey not work very well. Your second option woulb be to just get rid of the leafs and put some rearmound coil shocks on it and panhard bar. If your going through this much trouble i can't see it being a waste of time or money to go ahead and do it right without the leaf packs.

A caltrac/leafsping set up can work very good but it's not as easy as I heard from a lot of people trying to get the tune dialed in. The most successful guy with caltracts right now is also running addtional coilovers shocks mounded behind the rear.

A properly set up ladderbar with coilovers I'n my opinion works much better that anything leafspring related. I'm not saying always as theres' always someone out there screwing some thing that works up giving it a bad name and then there are the heros that do thing on certain parts that weren't supposed to be done.

If the ladderbar idea is already set in stone, just add the locator bar and put some shocks on it. simple as that. Then you don't have to deal with housing floaters and leafsprings. Caltracts on a ladder/leaf/floating housing setup would probably do nothing. As all the work is being done and transfered throught the ladderbars. Leafsprings are now just along for the ride soaking up bump.

Just a little rant.

 

Ah well thank you very much gentlemen. No I'm not dead set on ladder bars but should I ever need to haul something in the bed I'd rather have the leafs. I've heard about problems with rear coils not distributing the weight evenly. But hey, I guess I'll just pick up an old beater for a work truck and use this one for fun.

 

Just get a good set of cal tracs they help a lot my husband cut a 1.55 6o ft wit stock leaf and shocks with cal tracks only on his setup

 

If you are considering putting ladderbars on a leaf spring suspension, check out Season 3 Episode 5 of Gearz. http://www.staceydavid.com/showdetails.php?episode=33 It shows the work involved in installing the floaters and ladder bars.

 

How difficult is it to install a caltracs system.

 

Its easy, its basically bolt on and rotate bars for adjustment

 

I built heathers and mine both pretty easy setup I love ours its tons easier
compared to ladder bars and relocating crap