Rc silverado front lift and skyjacker rear lift coils

[87carl]

@87carl I'm excited for you let us know how it goes, are those lift knuckles?

Yeah they are. I wanted lift knuckles to help cv angles with only dropping differential 1 inch and help tie rod angles. front lift is rough country 3.5 inch knuckle lift for 2007-2013 silverado sierra 1500s. They don't sell a knuckle lift for the tahoes and suburbans. Planning to use a truck lift is what led to me looking for lift springs I obviously can't use the kits rear lift blocks lol I'm using the truck rear shocks from the kit. They fit but idk if there valving will be to soft or to firm for the suburban we'll see if I don't like it I can buy suburban 2-4 inch lift shocks when I get the parts to finish the rear suspension.

Started doing the rear suspension today it got to cold and dark to finish yet. Gotta bolt the driver side caliper back on and passenger shock and passenger sway link. Then bleed brakes and rear suspension will be done for now. Had hard time getting axle low enough for longer rear spring to go in place. And due to design and geometry of the rear suspension the control arms pull the axle slightly forward and panhard bar pulls axle slightly to the passenger side and my sway bar links are kinda short now. It will be fine like this for a while but I definitely gotta get spohn adjustable control arms and spohn adjustable panhard bar and longer sway bar links to get everything back to proper geometry. That will also be a huge upgrade from the weak stock stamped steel arms and panhard. Also gotta get rear shocks boots rough country shocks don't have boots on them and it bugs me lol new springs unsprung lengths are exactly 2.5 inches longer than stocks so depending on spring rates should lift about that much. Old springs were 17 inches long new ones are 19.5. ignore the mud i may have went through a field couple days ago and haven't had chance to wash it yet I kinda wish I had washed it before working on it lol

 

[87carl]

And the moog spring isolator pads that said they are for this generation suburban are alot smaller then the originals they fit kinda but not well so I gotta look into that if I can find better ones I will change them when I do rest of rear suspension

 

[87carl]

Finished the rear end and got it back on it's wheels front is up on blocks and rear suspension needs to settle. so it looks a bit taller than it will be. Wheel spacers made the tires are almost even with the fender flares but rear axle is about an inch off center toward the right because of the stock panhard bar. Which makes passenger tire stick out slightly further that's gonna bug me. I put old front tires on rear so when I get the 2 new tires they will be on the rear. Gotta get longer rear brake hoses they pull a little at full droop so i left the center brake line bracket unbolted for now. And gotta zip tie or get abs wire clips to hold the abs wires in place old clips are to high and make wire short. Also started unbolting some of the passenger front suspension but didn't get alot done with that.

 

[87carl]

 

[87carl]

 

[87carl]

Front suspension out only took about 2 hours to get that far. But then ran into some troubles. trying to remove sway bar bushing bolts 2 of them stripped so gotta fix that. Cut first one gotta cut other one still and gotta get them out after that will have to weld nuts on them. And after putting on new tie rods was having a hard time getting new inner tie rod boots over steering rack was getting frustrated so decided to call it a day it was extremely windy today and I really didn't want to be out there freezing my butt off anyway lol it's nice being able to take everything off in one piece alot eaiser than removing one piece at a time. The passenger side strut was kinda rusted in place. everything was unbolted and hanging off it and still took some beating and prying to get it to drop. Hopefully it ain't so damn windy tomorrow

 

[87carl]

 

[87carl]

Does anyone have a source for extended rear brake hoses haven't been able to find much

 

[87carl]

Couple of questions.

The brake line bracket on the upper control arm mount that holds where hard line connects to the hoses. Can that be flipped to extend front brake lines down? There's two holes in mount one for bolt and one for a tab on the bracket. I will take a close up picture of that today.

The front upper control arm mounts down travel stop needs to be cut off according to the lifts instructions. Not a bad idea allows for more travel but while prying the suspension off I noticed that all the upper control arm mounts are surprisingly weak and bend easily. Cutting that off the forward mounts will make it even weaker. What have people done to gusset and reinforce them? My first thought was thicken them with 1/16 inch or 1/8th plate on the sides but the nubs for the alignment cams are on the sides and I would have to recreate those nubs on the plates. Could weld small bolts on in that spot. now thinking maybe just some angled gussets top and bottom of each side of each mount might be good enough? Idk yet maybe I'm just overthinking it want to figure that out and decide before I get to putting things back together.

 

[87carl]

Reinforced the forward upper control arm mount on the passenger side. the side that goes up to the strut mount is 1/8 inch that side I'm leaving alone but the rest of the control arm mount is 1/16 inch plate which had to much flex ability for my liking so welded a piece of 1/8 inch plate over it to strengthen it some. I also removed the down travel stop because the lift kit says to. The original cam alignment plates nub would be to short with this plate welded on so I welded a bolt in it's place and ground the head and threads off the bolt to make a new nub. I dont think I got enough of the undercoating off the frame welding to frame was very splattery and wouldn't hold a steady bead eventually I just turned up the heat and burned through it making a fat ass weld ugly but it's atleast solid I haven't used the old stick welder in few years mostly use mig anymore so surprised it wasn't worse lol hit it with black rust-oleum and some rust-oleum rubber undercoating to seal it. she goes for her annual undercoating in 3 weeks so not to worried about painting everything. I will do the thin side of the other 3 upper control arm mounts the same way. They probably would have been fine but I like over kill and not having to worry lol

 

[87carl]

 

[Tozan]

You might want to replace all the adjustment hardware on the control arms. Last time I did an alignment mine kept coming loose so I replaced all the bolts and nuts to solve the problem.

 

[87carl]

You might want to replace all the adjustment hardware on the control arms. Last time I did an alignment mine kept coming loose so I replaced all the bolts and nuts to solve the problem.

I have had that happen on a previous chevy I had. For this suburban i got moog upper control arm bolts and cam plates to avoid that
only hardware I am reusing on the front is lower control arm bolts crossmember bolts, abs wire bracket and brake hose bracket bolts

 

[87carl]

Last 2 nights have been long late nights so haven't had chance to update this first night I reinforced the rearward passenger side upper control arm mount and flipped brake line bracket upside down and installed the upper control arm, strut, calliper and brake hose. Last night cut the crossmember on the differential like the lifts instructions say to. I didn't like the idea of having a big hole in a crossmember so I cut it an extra 1/8 inch bigger in each direction than instructions said to and made a filler piece out of 1/8 inch plate and welded it up solid. Cut the fins on the differential and added the differential 1 inch drop spacers and reinstalled the crossmember set up the knuckle wheelbearing dust shield rotor and wheel spacer for passenger side. Had to trim the nub off the studs on wheelbearing so they didn't stick past spacer. Installed the lower control arm and knuckle and cv shaft. Getting knuckle to line up with upper control arm was a challenge to do till it fell of a jack then it suddenly lined up lol also did brakes on that side. Only thing left to do on passenger side is grease ball joints and tie rods bleed brakes and put tire on then I can move to the driver side and start reinforcing those upper control arm mounts and install that side. Also i ordered spohn adjustable panhard and rear control arms, crown performance stainless extended rear brake hoses and a sway link for a jeep jk with 3 inches lift it's 12.25 long and looks like our stock rear sway links hopefully it fits.

 

[87carl]

 

[87carl]

Updated title seems I'm covering more than just rear coils on here.

I can't wait to get it done. doing it with mostly hand tools in a driveway takes forever I should have done it in my friends shop on the lift. And if I just followed lift instructions and didn't do all the extra welding it would be alot faster. That's if they actually sent the instructions with the lift. And If I wasn't replacing literally everything too lol But yea I want this truck to be right. Hell I want it better than stock. nothing running bad angles no squeeks or rattles and tough enough to handle any abuse I throw at it. With enough clearance I'm not scraping the bottom on everything. I tend to abuse my vehicles so far only my dodge trucks have been able to survive more than a year I want this one to survive also.

 

[87carl]

With brake hose bracket upside down abs wire can't clip to it without hitting the bolt and frame so drilled 2 holes in upper control arm mount to clip abs wire. note how close bracket is to the alignment cams but they do clear and have full range of motion

 

[87carl]

Passenger side front is done other than bleeding brakes and hooking up the sway bar. It will settle some when we start to drive but currently is sitting 4 inches higher than it used to in the rear and 6.5 inches higher in the front. Way more than it should be with a 3.5 lift in front and 2.5 in rear. Small amount might be in tires old fronts where bald and got moved to rear and rears which have alot of tread got moved to the front. Got 2 new ones that will go on the rear in couple days. Included stock hight picture from when I started this project for reference ignore the mess of tools and parts I gotta clean up before I move over to do the driver side front. center caps for rims will go on after I torque lug nuts.

 

[87carl]

So far the only thing that bugs me is the cv angles but hopefully that will straighten out some when suspension settles

 

[Bill 1960]

Have you checked the CV for binding at full suspension droop and with the steering at full lock? If it’s not binding then you may have premature wear but at least it’s not gonna break the first time you hit a rock while turning. Visually it looks right on the edge of the CV articulation range, but photos can be tricky.