Lift Disaster, Dispair, and Correction

Fuck that ^

 

I have a 6 inch DBL, 1.25 spidertrax spacers, 17x8 HRE wheels, 35x11.5 tires, TC UCA's with heim joints. I have had this for 8 years and had to replace the bearing hubs twice on passenger side and 3 times on driver side plus cv shafts twice(only because when I bought the truck, some moron put 2 inch spacers on top of the coilovers for even more lift) which gave me no droop and put the cv's at severe angles all the time.

 

Must be a heat wave here in Washington, 33° was 17° this morning

 

Ouch that sounds like it was costly

 

Not really, I use my truck, camping, 4wheeling and hauling.
Like I was saying tires,wheels, lift, everything plays a part even weather, sand, salt, mud.
I expect to replace parts every so often.
I did not expect to replace those parts as soon as I bought the truck but I got all my money back plus my labor from the dealer

 

Well that makes sense then for how much stuff you're doing.

More fun at the cost of more wear.

Plus the refund sounds good!

 

Yeah. I'm going into it knowing I'm going to wear out parts, and I enjoy working on my truck, some parts are affordable, some aren't

 

You know I imagine at some point it'll be that way for me as well. But for the time being I'm on a very limited budget.

Also, has anyone had any experience with the JBL upper control arms? They have a pair that are equivalent to the stock caster amount and I think that I'm going to go that route as soon as taxes come in

 

I agree, but OP is in a different boat. He shouldn't be having these issues. It's not a matter of wear and tear in this situation.

 

Get the SPC adjustable arms. They're great and easy to set up yourself before handing them to the installer and alignment tech. That's my suggestion. There are way more out there than JBL arms.

 

Well there are two things that push me to the JBL's, one being that I've read thread after thread where people have had the SPC's fail by snapping off... That makes me really weary of using them... But also more important to the current situation is that the JBL's are $449, this really helps out in the budget department.

(Note I corrected the price, they are $449)


I would put my stock arms back on but they are kind of trashed so I feel like it would be a waste to do that.

Are there perhaps any under $475 that are still good quality? Basically after reading everything here and thinking more I believe that stock caster arms will be the best ultimate solution, though I will also remove the swaybar brackets and test it without the bar as well. It would be nice to use the alignment shops near me and not have to drive to a specialty one.. haha.


Correction... JBA. Damn I'm just drunk tonight.

 

Depends on where the funds are coming from.

 

Put the old ones on with new joints

 

Oh that's possible? I was trying to look up if they could be rebuilt. Is there a write up for that?

 

I think you should try the other cheaper suggestions before you just start throwing parts at it. I can't image your UCA have that much caster built into them that you can't get it down below 5 where they are at now. I think you need to find an alignment shop that knows what they are doing. Do this and also remove the sway bar drop mounts and then go from there. I don't know your schedule but both these things can be accomplished on a sat. morning. Only replace your uca and springs when you know they are the issue.

 

Yes I am going to remove the sway bar brackets and try driving without it.

But last night I did a little investigation, it's not exactly scientific but I think that the fabtech arms add way more caster than every other arm.

So I got a bunch of different pictures of like the stock uca'a, camburgs, total chaos, fabtach, etc. pretty much all of the sites had a top-down vertical photograph of them. the fabtech is the only arm in which the joint is basically lined up with the bushing joint. I was going to make a little diagram but I didn't have time last night...

Basically it looks like the fabtech arm is as far back as possible while maintaining a u shape whereas all of the other arms are nowhere near this far back, that leads me to believe that this arm adds the most caster which explains why they've had to adjust my wheels so far back into the well because the caster is so high.

There was someone a lot earlier in the thread that mentioned that he believed the fabtech arms were really only good for 3 to 6 in of lift, at this point I believe that he is spot-on.

I also got under the truck for a minute this morning to look at how the lower arms are adjusted, and it does look like they're tilted back as far as possible.

Okay so I got some screenshots from headstrong website, it's not as fancy as what I was going to try to make but I think it shows off what I'm talking about. The fabtech arm's are the furthest back, which would indicate that they would give the most caster.

 

I also do want to lower the front regardless of these issues but I'm sure that would not be possible to do safely with the current arms, so that's another reason in the bucket.

I also noticed that th JBA arms are greasable which is better than the stock, so that adds a point to the jba bucket.

For now I'm just going to try to remove the sway bar and see how that goes and people have suggested.

 

Do you plan on getting taller tires in the future? If so, those fabtech arms might cause the taller tires to hit the cab mount. If you don't plan on going to taller tires, then just go with the spacers until you can afford/find the wheels you really want. If you're just trying to make the truck driveable for now without spending much, the cheapest route is to remove the sway bar/drop bracket, bend up the edges on the skid plate (or remove it) so it doesn't contact the tire or do the spacers to get the clearance. New springs, UCA's, shocks are all going to cost a lot more and might not even solve your issue.

The SPC UCA's should be fine for your truck if you need new arms since you don't go offroading. They have quite a bit of adjustment. Don't read too much into guys breaking them, a lot of guys abuse stuff and don't admit it.

 

Here's another vote for 'remove swaybar relocation brackets' and 'replace Fabtech UCAs with stock/less-caster UCAs'.

Damnit John, wish you were closer. I'd come over and help you out with this...

 

Jeeze

1. That’s a ton of caster compared to stock. Is all the caster achieved at the upper ball joint vs the lower control arm? We’re the alignment cams touched when it was aligned?

If you leave the cams in a “neutral” position and align it with that much caster the wheels get pushed too far back in the wheel wells. This will cause them to rub the mud flaps and inner fender.

2. Have we determined if the sway bar relocation brackets are installed correctly? If they’re backwards, it would pull the sway bar closer to the suspension.