yup, 3 inch springs give quite a bit of lift.

 

WOW. I have to say thatis impressive lift then, i cant imagine a 5 inch lift. So I do believe it has not settled. OK I have some work to do now.

Thanks

 

is it possible that the front of the truck used to sit level with the rear? and that the front has settled so much that the leaves are now touching?? just a thought good luck

 

I dont know man, I have 5in marlin crawler springs on my truck and 37s and yours looks taller than mine!!

 

Looking at the rear some more. The spring mount for the rear springs has been moved forward about 3-4 inches. IT is not the same location as my 89 rear spring mounts. Not sure if this is something differnt for an 86 model. The springs are not chevies, they have Toyota rear stenciled on them

 

has the thing been body lifted? Down thurr in the south its frequent for people to just jack the crap out of anything they can to run mud. That often (when I lived in muddy south florida that is) means a towering body lift. If that's the case, you can probably just remove them with some new hardware and sit them on the regular body mounts. If not, start by dropping that behind ASAP, especially if its as simple as a set of drop shackles.

 

No body lift. I too came from south Florida and know extensively bout those 5 inch body lifted rigs. They work but they will die and kill others on the road

 

hey man, just pull those 2" blocks out of the back and put the new front shackles in and see how she looks. and post some more pics too!

 

any updates? did you get the new front shackles in? take the block outta the rear? any new pics?

 

If I were you dude, I would take a stock one and measure all the mounts and then chop all the junk that is on your rig now and re-weld them all.
Give you a fresh starting point, then just put whatever shackles/leafs under it you think you need.

That's what I did with my '85 basically, worked out great.

Fink

 

I put my shackles on the front but couldnt button it down since i had only one bushing in the passenger side spring. So I am waiting for All Pro's package to get here. I am going to work on the springs today. Going to remove the rear blocks and remove a leaf out of each fron packs and see what that gives me.

 

Well the blocks are out of the rear. Pieces of aluminum junk. But it dropped it OK, I am happy with it, I measured at the body pinch seam to the ground and it measures 31 in the rear and 31 3/4 in the front. So it is a little higher in the front. I do beleive I am going to make the shackles a little lower at 4 inches bolt to bolt. Right now I made them at 5 inches. So that should level things out. I need to order some shocks for the rear and I will be happy for now. I want to go riding and break in the springs. I jsut removed the drive flanges from the front axle and swapped in some hubs from my spare front axle. I will get pics out tomorrow when it is light.

Thanks

 

What did you do to fix the front shackle having the spring hit the frame?

 

I made some shackles. I made them a little longer knowing i could always go smaller. Goodthing I did

 

Here are some pcis. I didnt get to messing with the front shackles.

 

Lowered the front shackles an inch and it is buttoned up.





As of now it is only a 1/4 inch higher in the front. So I am gonig to leave it at that. I am going to make a front bumper so that may level it. The shackle angle is fine for me, so I am gonig to run it. or run it after i get the brakes bled.

 

Gotta somewhat disagree here.

While I COMPLETELY agree that ballance is key, I think a low COG is much preferable to miles of compression. I also don't think that low and reasonable compression are mutually exclusive.

Clearly, when an axle hits the bump stop, the truck will go up on that side, especially on IFS. However, boat loads of compression travel makes a truck tippy and unstable because of the amount of lift required.

With a leaf spring truck, it is very hard to bring the truck low, becuase of steering interference. Also, leaf springs are limited in the amount of axle twist they can accomodate. However, one can still set up a solid axle truck to have a fair amount of compression travel and be low when linking with coilovers.

For the sake of argument, lets remove things like fenders, hoods, and firewalls as obstructions to this example. Clearly, on a bodied truck, those would be in the way. Also, lets assume that the motor has been lifted or designed so oilpan clearance isn't a problem.

Now, lets put the front axle roughly 2-3" away from the frame, and just place a small piece of polyurethane there to act as a bumpstop.

For this argument, lets use a 16" travel Coilover. Set the coilover so that, with the axle at 2" from frame, or ride height, the CO is roughly 60/40 extension/compression, or sitting at roughly 9.5" compressed, with about 6.5" of compression left. Given the nature of the links, and the coilovers, the axle will be free to bump up 2", then pivot around the bumpstop, allowing the full 6.5" of compression to be used.

Considering the distance from the CO mount to the actual tire, you will see more travel at the tire itself, though I'm not going to do the trig right now.

Obviously, this would not work for jumping or highspeed stuff, but for a rock crawling example, it works well. You can maintain a low ride height, and keep the suspension travel pretty well intact.

 

Agreed, Isaac - your example is somewhat reasonable. But these days, people aren't focused on performance from a system point of view - many are purely focused on JUST low COG, and are sacrificing tons of usable compression travel to do it.

(I would also argue that once you hit the bumpstop, the spring rate is going to get so high that you will be hard pressed to get that 6.5" of theoretical travel - fat guy on the short end of the seesaw)

 

Well, the other side is helping you out too, by flexing down, the very nature of axle will simply treat the bumpstop as a pivot.

 

Not exactly - once you hit the bumpstop, you effectively have 2 points of rotation (the bumpstop and the natural center of rotation), and the leverage the other side has is greatly reduced.