Alcan leaf spring

Just wanted to post up a quick, not-so-quick review on my experience getting a leaf pack built by Alcan. If you search the site, you’ll get a bunch of hits with people saying “go custom Deaver or Alcans” but not a lot of feedback on the quality or experience from people that actually pulled the trigger.
So hopefully this will be somewhat more helpful.
Back in March I went thru their process of filling out the request form with all the information about what I needed out of a leaf pack.
Promptly got a response with a quote from Bob, and after a couple back and forth emails, called in to place the order and give them the payment info.
Orders take about 3-4 weeks to build, and they don’t charge your card until your order ships.
4 weeks later, I get a shipping notice, and a couple days later they are at at my door.
Overall build quality looks good, and they shrink wrap and tape the ends so that they don’t get beat to hell when the ups man is dragging them around.
They also pre-grease the poly bushings when they install them into the pack. I took them apart and greased them again anyways, but I thought it was thoughtful of them to do it.

A couple weeks go by before I get a chance to get my lift in, and the install was pretty uneventful. No issues installing the leafs, they went right on, and the center pin was trimmed enough to get the bump stop over it so I didn’t even need to do that.
Get the truck back on the ground, cycle the suspension, torque everything down and I immediately notice that they aren’t giving me anywhere close to the lift I requested. Not close at all, not even half of what I requested.
Thinking I may have done something wrong, I put the truck back in the air, loosen everything up, cycle the suspension again re-torque everything again.
Same thing, not even close to spec.
Now I’m super bummed, and a little frustrated, I spent some decent coin on a custom pack, waited 4 weeks for it, went thru the whole install and my truck is sitting all bro!

The next day I call up Alcan and explain what’s going on, and ask them if I could have done something wrong.
They put me hold to grab my paperwork, and I’m waiting about 10 min for them to get back to me. Bill the owner comes on the phone, I talk him thru what’s going on, he walks me thru the build specs, and we are both sitting on opposite ends of the phone scratching our heads dumbfounded.
Then, he then asks me to give him a couple of days, and they will build me another pack and ship it out. I can just send the first pack back when I get the replacement pack in so I don’t have to break the truck down multiple times.
While this was absolutely the best, and most right thing to do, it was probably the farthest thing from what I was expecting.
I was pretty blown away by it, especially after the stories you hear about companies like king, icon and Bilstien having customers pull their suspension and send it in so they can inspect it before they will consider warrantying it.
Less than a week later, I’ve got another set of leaf springs. I was pretty impressed.
So it’s another couple weeks pass before I can get time to swap them out. I’ve got everything out, I’m ready to go, and when I look at the replacement leaf springs, they are slightly different from the other ones.
The packs are side specific, marked right and left for obvious reasons, and on the first pack there is a U-shaped bracket the e-brake cables bolts to. It is exactly that, a U and there’s bolt holes on both sides. On the replacement pack, it’s a J shape where one of the legs is cut off....and it’s cut off on the outside of both springs, not the inside!!
There’s no way to stretch the e-brake cable to the inside of the leaf spring, these leaf springs aren’t going to work either.

Back on the phone I get with Bill to explain what’s going on, and that there is no way the replacements he sent are going to work. He explains that they just started cutting one leg off the brackets because people were having issues with them rubbing on the muffler and the fuel tank, and the guys must have cut off the wrong legs.
We have a bit of a laugh about the whole thing, like “really
What else can go wrong here?!”
At this point I feel kinda bad, because if he hadn’t already, he’s going to loose money on the deal, and it’s looking like he’s going to completely bleed out with wasted leaf packs and hundreds of dollars shipping them back and forth.
I tell him I’ll send him some pictures and let’s just regroup next week and figure out the easiest solution for both of us.

Then I got an email back from him asking me to measure each one of the springs, because they may have just been marked backwards instead of built backwards. I measure them and sure enough the one marked right is higher than the one marked left.
I let him know, and we are both like thank god!! I can just put them in opposite and hopefully be done with it without anymore problems.
It took me a couple more weeks to get the time to put the replacement pack in, and when I did they were dead nuts perfect to the lift I needed.
Took the truck to get the alignment done and the tech was telling me he really didn’t have to do anything in the back, the thrust angle was almost dead on which is a testament to the quality of good springs.
Between the 2 packs, I’ve put almost 500 miles on them and I’m super happy with the ride quality of the progressive 8 leaf that Alcan builds. I don’t wheel hard or go rock crawling, so I can’t speak to any of that, but the springs are more than enough for what I need them for, and are overall great so far.

I fuck up plenty at work, so I’m a pretty reasonable customer when these kind of things happen. It wasn’t really anything to get excited over, but I couldn’t say more about how professional and accommodating everyone at Alcan was, and the great service they gave me throughout process. I wouldn’t hesitate to work with them again, or recommend them to anyone looking to get leaf springs built.

 

Hey man. How much was the leaf pack and shipping ? Looking at these also

 

Right around 6 bills plus tax and shipping.
A little steeper than some other options, but well worth it.

 

That's good to hear they do stand behind their product sometimes. Mine was a completely different story.

 

How much of a lift did you ask for. Im looking into getting a set to replace the blocks on my drop bracket lift. Did they come with new u-bolts ?

 

They will build them to specification for whatever amount of lift and load capacity you want.
U-bolts are extra, they take your specs and custom bend then for you. But the price was in-line with what you would pay if you bought a set.

 

How about a two year review? Ha. How are they holdin' up?

 

Cash money. Have not had a single issue. No squeaks no rust, no sagging.
Would not think twice about getting another pair.

 

Can you post a few pics? And did you increase the bed capacity any?