Tahoe Suspension Work 99-06 5.3 and 4.8’s

[Midnigh_D_Tahoe]

When I redid my suspension on my 04 Tahoe I did not realize that the suspension and the alignment are basically interconnected, SO if your thing on doing suspension work on your GMT 800 pay extra attention to the ways your camber bolts and brackets are placed, the camber and caster bolts are the bolts that connect your upper control arm to your Tahoe, IF you even loosen them without marking almost exactly there the are originally you will STILL need an alignment asap so schedule that the day after you install your front suspension. That is a must don’t do all this toe line stuff that’s just waste your time take pictures use paint whatever you want once you have the wheel off you can get to them. But still after having it close you will need a professional alignment (we are talking cam’s) or you will absolutely have alignment issues. The rear shocks are easy to get to, once you take off the inner wheel wells. figure out how the plastic clips work and unscrew the bolts that hold them in and take it off; put the rearend up l; you may need a small jack to crank up the rear wheel hubs to be able to reach the top shock bolts. Then boom new suspension spray everything that your going to work on for three days before you work on it and it should be a piece of cake.

 

[NardDog]

Always good advice, will be doing this soon

 

[West 1]

After you do your new alignment remove the front tires and re torque the upper control arm bolts. The spec is something like 140 ft pounds but the alignment shops cheat, torque them from 3 feet away with extensions and the torque is usually less than 60 ft pounds. At 60 your new alignment will not hold in spec. Bumped into this a few times now.

 

[OR VietVet]

Imo, you do not torque them when at full droop with tires off. Either torque them with tires on and full weight on ground OR tires off and both lower control arms are set down with full weight on them and have jack stands under them, right next to lower ball joints, as close to ride height as possible.

 

[West 1]

OR Viet Vet, 100% correct, it is easy to use small jack stands under the lower control arms to have full weight on the system as you torque. I certainly should have mentioned that. Thanks for pointing it out. I was focusing on get them torqued because the shops I have used never do that job properly.