Adjustable lift for highway and trail?

I bought a '17 limited (all stock) in February, and just took it to the trail for the first time, fairly mellow with some 8-12" water crossings and pretty deep rollers and potholes. I decided to stop at a section that involved an option between A: three consecutive water crossings with four deep potholes on the other side, with a steep pitch to the right side. Or B: a large rutted mud field that I could easily make it through, but with a 45° heavily potholed climb (20yds uphill) with a sharp potholed turn to the right mid-climb, linking back up to the main trail.

At that point I decided to take option C and park off to the side, adjacent to the high-centered aviator in the mud field.

And I started thinking. I've never owned a truck worthy of suspension/ tire upgrades, but I'd like the ability to run a set of HTs at ~stockish height, and then a set of something bigger and aggressive with a 3-4" lift.

A few questions:
1. Will alternating back and forth between two different sets of tire sizes screw with the computer or gearing, or anything else?
2. Does adjustable-height suspension even exist?
3. If so, what's sacrificed in exchange?
4. Would it make more sense to pick a fixed lift-height and tire size, and maybe swap between tread types?

 

go lookin for trouble.......................U will find it

there will ALWAYS be something /somewhere that will busts Ur balls

if fire trails

large 1000 acre ranch

some1 paying big bucks to ride a pipeline.....................U the man

have to ask Urself truly

realistically

what are UR needs

 

You could technically do air suspension, and adjust your height with air pressure. Besides the challenges of swapping over and the cost, I'm not personally a big fan of air suspension for off road rigs in case of a puncture

As far as tires, if you're really wanting to run a dedicated highway tire when not on the trail, I would stick with same size tires, or only a small change, and have a static lift. Honestly all terrain tires these days are pretty good, both quiet on the road and grippy in the dirt. Unless you really want a hard-core mud tire for off roading, an all terrain will do everything you want

 

Suspension, No. Tires yes but it’s probably not worth the effort to swap back and forth.

 

You beat me to this question by literally an hour...
Oh well, the reply's are great.

On the same subject, do you guys have any recommendations for suspension?
I'm completely new to the truck world, and trying to learn what I should look for in suspension.
Any help or links to good reference material would be AWESOME!

 

It all depends on what you want your truck to do. A good starting place is a set of bilstein 5100 struts and shocks. Theyre ride height adjustable in the front, but can be used at stock height and are a nice upgrade of stock. Also very affordable.

If you wanna rock crawl, or go fast, or tow, or just have a more comfortable truck, you can really go off the deep end with upgrades

 

I'm mostly interested in "Overlanding" I think is the term? I'm mostly looking to be able to get into REALLY rough roads, that are more rained out unused trails than roads, and a bit of Off-Roading.
I'll probably want to tow a bit down the line, but I doubt I'd go much past ~7500 lbs ever (I couldnt even do that stock), I'd only ever want to tow a boat.

 

I just did the rough country 6" lift, took a coulple days but i got my vertex reservoir shocks dialed in let me say totally impressed

 

If you want a rig that's versatile between rough roads and heavy towing, you'll probably eventually land on a high end setup with quick adjustable shocks, since the demands are very different. That being said, don't forget that the factory tow limit is based on more than suspension. Power, braking, and cooling capacity for the engine, trans, and diff are all limiting factors. Plus as you push the weight higher, the trailer can start to drive the truck pretty easily in turns and wind.

Whatever you end up with if you do your research, you'll find what you're after. Enjoy the truck and stay safe

 

Take the following as my beliefs and minor experience. It's free and worth exactly what was charged.

Three things you can do to improve clearance. Bigger tires lift everything up. Trim up the front bumper to improve approach angle. Trim up the rear bumper and get rid of or integrate the tow hitch to improve departure angle.

Lifting a truck improves approach and departure angle but doesn't do anything for your dif/axel clearance. For off roading lifting doesn't even help much with clearing larger wheels (compression just stuffs the wheel right back up where it was). Lifts also increase your center of gravity and make off camber sections feel tippier.

Here is how I would approach your 'two setups' situation. For wheels and tires I would look for a wheel with zero to +12 offset and look at a 275/70r17 tire for your off roading. You'll need to do some minor trimming but can probably avoid major work (go ahead and check out the wheels/tires section of this website, just don't start a thread with "what are the largest..."). Then get a set of stock size wheels/tires for your daily. Get a set of fox dsc adjustable shocks and have them tuned for your truck (accutune is a business that gets a ton of recommendations here, check their website for tons of good info). You can turn dials on the shocks and adjust the feel.

I suspect if you did this you would probably get sick of the effort of switching out wheels depending on the day and just run 275/70 at tires full time. I must be lazy because changing tire pressure and adjusting the dials on suspension is about all the work I want to deal with. I can't imagine switching coilovers/leafs/wheels on Friday night because the boys want to go out in the morning.

Edit: suspension isn't cheap, can make you hate or love your truck, and can have very long wait times on orders. Take your time, learn as much as you can and make informed and deliberate changes. Be honest with yourself on motivations.