My truck is one of my ongoing projects. Already its timing belt installation, some lighting modifications, and some other things about it are up here. About a year ago I did a torsion bar crank which lifted the front of the truck about 2 inches, which made the truck look nice and level. It’s settled a little since then. Today I finally lifted the back of the truck using a set of shackles.
The factory shackle is the smaller one. The new shackles are adjustable and can obtain from 1″ to 2″ of lift over the stock shackle. I went with the 2″. The process was fairly straightforward. I used my new Hi-Lift jack to get the truck on jack stands and get the wheels slightly off the ground. Then I used a breaker bar and hammer to remove the old shackle, using my floor jack to take tension off of the leaf spring. From there it was simply a matter of attaching the new shackle to the frame and using a large C-clamp to push the leaf spring down to the lower shackle bolt.
Here is the first set of Before-And-After pictures:
And, of course, the change in the ride height is obvious, although looks much more impressive in person:
I like these pictures because the shadows tell roughly how long it took me to do all of this. But that includes going to get a burger and watching an episode of Star Trek in between shackles.
The next thing will be to install aftermarket upper control arms and ball joints on the front suspension, to get the full available 3″ of lift in the front. Those parts are sitting in my living room. Then eventually I’ll install Bilstein/Nismo shocks all around and put new leafs in the back and new torsion bars in the front. But those will wait a while.