How to: Chevy 63" Leaf Spring Swap

I need to stew on it. My Financial Advisor may also need to stew on it.

 

aka the wife?!

 

Bingo!

 

I'm thinking about going this direction too, with AG shock relocation, 14" & 63s... Do you have anymore photos to share (full droop, compressed, etc)

 

What is everybody getting for up travel at ride height? I'm sitting at exactly 3" over stock, and only have around 4.5-5" of up travel. Only like 3.5" of clean up travel. The droop and flex is great, but I'm disappointed by the up travel for sure. I'm thinking of cutting it all off and doing something else

 

I’ve always set them up to 5”s of up

 

Yeah from all my reading it seems that's what everybody is at. I'll probably be swapping to spring under at some point because of that. Oh well!

 

I'm a little over 4" from stock and 5.5" of bump. Will be stuffing a 16" shock under it and going to set the up travel to 6.5-7". But I went with a spring no one has gone with that has more arch than every other 63" it also measures 64". When cycling my springs I can push them to just over 17" of travel

 

All on my build page and a YouTube video from Tacomaholic

 

Yeah that's sitting way too high for me. I would rather be at 2" lift over stock, so settled for 3 when putting it together initially. Any more than that and it just doesn't make sense to me. I think the only way to get reasonable flex with good up travel is spring under unfortunately. I'm sure some newer springs would help my situation, because these ones are probably pretty tired as well

 

Read up on SUA set ups. They will never go flat because of how much arch they have you'll have decent uptravel but where they really shine is in the high speed stuff and full droop out with both wheels off the ground. That's where they were built and designed for. I did lots of reading and research before I pulled the plug on my set up. There is a reason crawl type set ups are SO and high speed desert is SU.

 

yeah, I think my issue is that I mostly have crawling type stuff around me, so I bought all of the 63 swap stuff, then I did a trip to Baja and got totally hooked on high speed desert mobbing, came back and finally installed the 63 stuff, and now I'm realizing I wish I had gone sua haha.
I want a do it all truck, and the 63 swap is actually pretty good for that. its waaaay smoother and rides way better than my old dakars, never mind the much better articulation. Maybe I should just try a fresh 63" leaf pack and see if I get more out of it than I am right now, because I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not using all of my 16" of stroke; closer to 13". Then throw on some hydro bumps and it will probably be pretty well perfect for how I actually use my truck, despite my desert race truck obsession. I do go fast over bumps, but not like the proper desert guys.

I have the JD front kit and LT with 934's coming. so if I have 13" of front travel, That would actually pair pretty nicely with 16" in the rear I'd guess.

 

I just want your bed cage so I can put my 16's back on. Probably try to honor you in imitation in the future.....

 

I'll tell you what I bomb down the trails here on the East coast and absolutely love it. It's as close to do it all as I can get. Some hydro bumps and longer shocks and I'll be good. You could do a pack like mine and just recess/french the front mount into the frame and then instead of the rear hanger being level with the bottom of the frame raise it as well. You'll just have to redo some stuff on your bed cage to accommodate moving the shocks up.

Bombing around the trails here is pretty slow compare to Baja but it's crazy for here. Plus when I get on some really rough access roads and can go faster it does pretty good. There is a few things I can do to tune it a little better and a SU would do better catching air.

I guess what I'm getting at is build the truck for what you'll mainly be doing and then the compromise would be for those trips that aren't really what it's built for. I never understood guys here building go fast trucks and we got nothing like the west coast here for them to be used the way they are built

 

Haha thanks man! It's pretty simple but super strong, no complaints there. I've added a couple things to it, like tie down points, and stuff like that which has made it really good. I plan on also adding a spare tire mount to it, as well as a storage box at the front of the bed next to the spare when I have time. Its nice having some proper tie down points, not the flimsy toyota ones that slide in the tracks.

yeah man, for sure. I maybe sound like I'm complaining to much, because my setup has been performing amazing. I just want more out of it as I'm sure we all do. I'd like to at least use all of the shock stroke, and ideally have more like 6" of up travel or more at the same ride height. I think I will probably look for some new leafs and i can probably get away with doing just the rear shackle hanger to lower ride height while still getting a bit more up travel.

I know its in this thread, but what leaves did you use again? I might get some chevy 63" deavers.

 

It's not complaining I totally get it 100%. I found some things I want to change and improve on mine after I set it up and am going to do so. I'm running 11+ 1500HD/2500 springs they have a 6 3/4" arch compared to the std 63 of ~5" depending on yr. I took the overload off and it's a 5+1 pack I'm just at a 5leaf now. And no it's not harsh or too stiff. In fact it's softer than the deavers stage 3 expo leaves I had before and can handle more weight.

 

Kinda ironic......I've been on the 88-98 4+1 without the overload. Adding the 5th this weekend to help out with pig weight of DP...

 

Yep the older packs were really reliant on the overload to carry weight. I researched leaf packs for 6 or 7 months before I made my decision. I almost had alcan build a pack after talking with them to the specs of this one. Also without the overload it does shorten the life especially if you are constantly loaded down with a decent payload, same with wheeling the amount of extreme cycling especially if you are going into negative arch shortens their life.

 

I was mistaken I went back and saw what I posted I'll get under and measure but 5" of bump is what I posted.

 

okay cool. sounds like we are around the same amount of up travel but you would have more down travel if you weren't limited by your shocks? Where did you buy your leafs from? do you happen to have a link?

do you set your bumps for articulation travel, or for straight up and down travel? because mine are set to have the leaves flat during articulation, but im starting to wonder if I should set them for straight up and down travel, and if they go a bit negative on articulation, no biggy because it doesnt happen super often anyway. That might score me another .5-1" of travel for normal driving. Or maybe it would be the same, who knows.