Front Ends


             When I first did this lift I rigged everything. I used 6-inch spacers up front with the stock springs that had over 110,000 miles of hard driving on them. The shock spacers were allthread at the bottom of the shock. Absolutely no support. I notched the stock lower arms to clear the axle but didn't change the length. As you can probably see I had problems to fix before I ever got to the hard stuff.
            Figuring out why the truck got the dreaded "DEATH RATTLE" was the hardest part of this lift. I've tried to explain the basics of what is happening below. Most of you that get your truck up this high will run into this problem eventually. I can tell you from experience and throwing away a lot of money what does not cause the " DEATH RATTLE". 

    1. It is not because of your caster. unless of coarse you have negative caster. If you have at least 1/2 a degree of positive caster then you will be O.K. however I recommend at least 1 to 1 1/2 degree's.

     2. It is not because of camber. My truck has 1 degree of negative camber. The top of the tires are tilted in to each other. Is this within factory specs? NO. But I haven't noticed any wear problems on the tires so I'm not worried about it.

    3. It isn't tire balance. if your tires are out of balance that bad you will never make it above 40mph.

4. it's probably not any part in the front-end. If the truck didn't shake before the lift it won't after.

              The only way that I know of to fix the problem other than drop the pitman and the track bar is to change the steering system to one similar to the one on the CJ's. That is to have one bar that goes from one tire to the other and then from that bar to the pitman.

             The new Rock Ready kit has a drop pitman of 3-inches and they have a control arm cradle that drops the mounting point of the control arms on the truck it's self by 6-inches. at first I thought the cradle was an excellent idea, however after thinking about it for a while I have since changed my mind. The cradle is nice, and it puts the control arms level with the truck which keeps the axle going all most straight up and down like it is suppose to, however it does throw in another problem. In lowering the pivot point of the control arms they have lowered it below the pivot point of the front drive shaft as it comes out of the transfer case.
At first this may seem to be trivial, however on the trail when you get into some articulation you run the risk of ether the drive shaft separating or bottoming out at the slip yoke. This is caused by the different pivot points. Since the drive shaft is higher than the control arms it will bottom out on compression and slip apart on extension. If you are into rock crawling this could really ruin your day. 


This is at stock location. This location is optimal so that there is not really any change in toe as the suspension cycles.

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As you can see in this pic, the angles are dramatically changed. Set up like this your left tire's toe changes every time the suspension moves and will eventually ware out your left tire QUICK. Other problems can and will be darting, wandering, the dreaded "DEATH RATTLE" and over-all bad handling.

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Just the track bar drop will get the axle moving straight up and down, which is good but will induce bump-steer out the ying-yang. The toe on both tires will now vary during cycling and will cause both front tires to wear out prematurely. The truck may also wander all over the road, dart and have severe bump-steer.

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This is with the pitman dropped and the track bar in the original location. steering problems are sever bump-steer, possible wandering and over all bad handling.

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This is with everything dropped. The axle moves straight up and down and the steering angles are close to stock. This has no bump-steer and greatly improves handling.

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