During my the Locos Mocos trip, I tore out one of the spring pockets from the frame. Had plans in the works to modify them, this just pushed up my schedule. The past few weeks I've been measuring and making calculations on spring and shock rates. I was really pushing to run the 14" short bodied Bilsteins, but ended up with the 12", even then the upper links will have to be replaced, since they won't articulate enough. The design I finally chose to build is a bolt-in set-up, to make it easier to modify if needed in the future.
Here are a few picture of the half completed assembly, today I drilled and sleeved the frame for the mounting bolts.
the first picture shows it at ride height
This shows how I will compensate for the spring dropping out of the pocket. It's a dual spring capture, I came up with and originally had planned to do to Lance's 4th Gen. At ride height it's compressed allowing normal suspension travel. I still need to weld in the shock mounts, additional gussets and do some trimming of excessive material. This mock-up was mainly to make sure my math was correct.
The top mount is only resting against the upper plate, I have to weld in the inner retaining sleeve and bolt up the bumpstop, which will also keep the spring assemblies in place during full droop.
As for additional travel, I gained almost 5", because of this the rear sway bar had to be removed, since it won't handle the excessive twisting.
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