Well, Tuesday I'm doing the deed! Taking her in to have the lower helper leafs removed and giving her a new look. The shop owner is a good guy and I told him that I would even spray the shackles down. Since he specializes in truck springs and suspension, he said it would be about 1.5hrs labor, no parts. It's time for an alignment so we'll knock off two birds with the one stone. I will keep you posted and tally the results.

 

I couldn't do that with my 2wd - it cut the travel down too much. I cut the ends off the OLs and put them back in. You might be fine with a 4wd. Craig

 

Thanks for the "heads-up" on the travel. I'll keep a close eye on the measurements.

 

I've thought about removing the overloads and adding airbags instead, but sofar I've left it alone.

 

why remove the helper's?

 

In my case, with the weight of my hauler bed, the truck was constantly bounceing off the bottom OLs and the ride was really hard. Cutting off the ends stopped that. When I took the bottom OLs out, the truck would sometimes bottom out on the bags. I put the OL back in (minus about 10" of the ends) and then I did a little surgery on the bottom bag brackets and got 3/4" more travel out of that. I'm good on travel, now. It's been a long time since i"ve looked under a 4x4 but I don't think they have the short travel like the 2wds. Craig

 

Since I don't tow or haul anything too heavy, I'm just looking to soften out the ride and make it easier on the bride too. No sense adding 200-300lbs of sand or salt to the bed just to make the ride comfortable................At $4.04 a gal, I want to trim weight, not add it! Looks fairly straightforward to remove the lower helpers, relocate the spacer blocks to the top of the spring pac and voila, 2" lower in the tush and a lot less jiggle. The distance between the top of the rear tire and the bottom of the fender is almost 11".............just a tad too much space for me.

 

OK, the first set of pics are the before and the second set, the after. The ride difference is amazing! Total,including the alignment $180. Pay no attention to the tape measure by the shock, I just put it there for reference not to shof the amount of drop. You can get the drop from the wheel/fender pics in the next post.

 

OK, here are the after pics. Now the wife says she "may" ride shotgun!

ADDED: Actual drop is 3"