Well, my friend and I just completed the installation of the SDORI bj spacers from trdparts4u.com up front and 1.5" shackels from suspensionconnection.com in the rear. Well, technically its not 100% complete because we broke the left torsion bolt readjusting for the bjspacers. But we'll have that replaced later tonite.

First of all, I was amazed at the quality of the bjspacers and were pretty easy to install. The most time consuming thing was the grinding of the inner A-arms, but a 4.5" grinder made life easy and once we got the hang of it on the first side, the second side took maby 30 mins total.

After the installation we began to readjust the torsion bars to 15.5" according to the bjspacer instructions (before the bjspacers install, the truck was at 14" and oddly enough after the install it was at 16"). We really should have soaked the torsion bolts overnight in penetrating oil, but we didn't and through our stupid impatience we managed to break one of the bolts about 1/4" from our goal. Once we get it all back together, I'll get an alignment

The shackles looked like they were used; they were dinged and the paint had scraped and there were rings around the nut holes, but there's not much to a shackle so we went ahead and installed them. They were insanely easy to install and both sides were done in about 30 mins total.

Next thing I'm gonna do is install my rancho 5180s I got for free when I bought the truck. Right now it has shocks that say "explorer" and I can't find any info on them, but the front ones seem a bit short. The front ones are loosened all the way and still seem to be pretty limited especially with the bjspacers installed. At first it seemed like the shock couldn't handle the spacers and was acting as the bumpstop itself, but after both sides were installed and jack removed it looked ok. Also, during the grinding of the a-arm on the right side i managed to burn a hole through the shock boot with spray.

All in all, for $150 this isn't a bad deal. Increased travel with the bjspacers and 1.5" lift all around.

 

Glad to hear the BJ spacer install went well. The Torsion bolts seem to be a problem for alot of people (mostly northern climates). I snapped one off on mine and sent threw the floor boards. If we can help in any way for future mods please let us know. I'll be watching for some pictures of your lift. Thanks for using trdparts4u.com

 

explorer pro comp shocks is probably what you have. es3000 model. they are pretty much identical to a rancho 5000 in every way.