Stevotivo12's SexyTaco build

Okay gimme a minute LOL. I figured that was coming, but it all happened so fast

 

ain't no rush. my truck is in pieces living on the rack last & next week minimum. and I'll be putting in those motor mounts. they are shipped and on the way to the shop.

 

Either way, heres a picture. My poly packing, while effective, was not pretty. But it definitely works and that works for me

 

ah i see. this will be under consideration. actually i just need to get out to the shop while the trucks up and show Pablo this. thank you.

i have some q's for you. i am completing my front end now and tweaking the rear a bit. but I'm looking at redoing the rear starting with a new leafpack. i have wondered how your 10 or 12 pack was doing for you and what kind of static weight you carry. i am also looking to get the spare sorted soon for the crosstube.

iirc when i measured according to Eric at Archive's instructions, i have 5/8" lift in the rear and I'm level. i don't need more lift but could deal with up to another say 1/2" although i would not prefer it. i have Hh but stock shackles so can change those if needed. by the way the only weight i typically carry is 80lbs of sand over the rear axle along with 100lb sliders.

 

Currently, only weight over stock is steel tailgate reinforcement (probably around 60-80lbs) and steel bedside stiffeners (maybe 20 more lbs) plus the shackle hangers (maybe 20 lbs) as far as static weight is concerned. Truck rides great and handles towing very well, however, the leaf packs have settled quite a bit from their original height and settled at uneven rates so I now lean slightly to the drivers side and am back to maybe an inch over stock where I started with almost 3" lift. I knew to expect the lean due to the completely uneven distribution of weight, and am looking in to mounting my battery somewhere under the passenger side of the bed to even things out a bit since that thing is another 80lbs. I will probably have the springs re-arched at some point to try to eliminate the sag, but I was told when installing it that if you can find a place to jump the truck a few times and really flex the suspension the way it was designed to be flexed you will be better off for it. I can not confirm whether this advice is legit personally, but its coming from the most legit off-road shop in my area so I would tend to trust it more than your average Joe.

He also said specifically that jumping them helps break the springs in and make sure they take loads more evenly over their life, which contributes to them sagging less and sagging more evenly. I would think that re-arching them could achieve the same effect but could also be wrong in that thinking, but it would definitely take them back to their original height and eliminate the sag temporarily.

 

cool. I've got time to consider it all. with this on the table I'm also looking at SUA conversion.

 

Sick! Overall, I still like the mod but it wouldn't feel right if I didn't fully disclose the only significant drawback I have noticed.

Edit: one thing I forgot was shock tuning. This became much more important after SUA. I had some pretty violent wheel hop initially but with enough rebound dampening and some slightly stiffer high speed bump dampening that sorted it out. Definitely worth mentioning that due to the fact that bypass shocks pushes up the cost pretty significantly. I think you could probably accomplish the same with lesser shocks than what I went with, but I did what I did and those were my results. From what I can tell, if bypass shocks make things cost-prohibitive than a three link and ORI struts could be significantly cheaper and eliminate the risk of uneven sagging

 

I'm committed to my shocks,i put a lot into them. i haven't custom tuned them because honestly they are close to perfect. but i can see it will change if i do a conversion.

i have looked at 3 link. I'm not sure between the two (SUA v. 3 link) since it's in the details of the total package. i think DMZ has a 3 link kit that a guy here installed about 20mi from me. when it comes down to a full top down comparison between the two, i honestly can't do it, my understanding of those conversions isn't good enough.

 

I can offer you a little info: 3-link involves ditching the leaf springs and shocks for either a coilover, coil bucket and shock, or as I suggested an ORI air/gas charged strut. ORI struts seem to be the best overall package to accomplish that due to their relatively low cost and unlimited tunability due to the air charging. 3 link also involves a lot of math to get things exactly right because the links need to be the right length to allow full droop while not binding the driveshaft. SUA is more straightforward, and uses all the stock mounting points, but it is heavier and I honestly have no idea how the performance would compare between the two, I just know that my setup was a huge improvement over stock SOA and stock leaf springs.

 

that's helpful, thanks.