So I angle into my garage to get the passenger side as close to the wall as possible. It's one of those tandem two car garages where you park one in front of the other. Narrow as hell. Mine's a shop in the back and the truck in the front. Absolutely verbotten to work on your cars outside where you can actually have room to work.

I had an an agressive (for me) wrenching weekend planned. I was going to swap Gen2 UCA's on, and while I had everything disconnected, swap on Gen2 front brakes at the same time, thus the need to angle into the garage and give me some room to work on the driver's side. Then back out using the ebrake, reposition, and do the passenger's side and finish her off with a brake bleed.

Got the UCA loose finally (man, popping that ball joint off was a bear!) and start taking it off, when I discover, arrggghhh, the body is in the way. I need to lift the body. Well, Roger Brown's 2 inch lift kit is on the shelf.

So it looks like I'll be doing a simultaneous body lift, UCA swap, and brake swap. It's gonna be a looooooong weekend.

It's all good.

Hmmm...forgot about that li'l tidbit. But now that I think of it, when I did my UCA swap a year ago, I did have quite a bit more room due to the 2" body-lift I'd installed a couple years previous.

Do you have the rear lifted already? After you install the Gen II UCAs, you will have to lift the rear also (if not already done), else you'll be way up in the front.

When Off-roader was out here last month, he was genuinely surprised to see how much lift I had on my rig, particularly in the front, despite still being IFS.

Yeah, I have OME coils in the back which resulted in a slight nose-down attitude, so the UCA swap should level me out a bit.

I better hit the sack now, I gotta get going early!

I was just looking at your list of mods in your sig. You're almost caught up to me! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> It'd be nice if more people went all-out (to that extent) on these trucks. Always nice to see another doing just that.

I'm gettin there, Joe <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Interesting info here, DD. Now I got to get my body lift from Roger before I can do my GenII UCA's. My wife, however, is not terribly excited about my truck being higher than it already is. Being 5'2", can't really blame her <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" /> Kinda cute carrying a little wooden stool for her to mount/dismount with. Maybe the sliders I'm building will help.

Best of luck on the endeavors of the weekend <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Sliders will help. I'm 6 feet and I use the sliders as steps all the time.

Yeah, Cap'n, I'm getting there! Only problem is my list of future projects is getting short. What will I do with my time then? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

Things are going faster than I thought. Didn't get started until noon, but by 4:30 I finished one UCA and half the body lift. The only excitement I had was the drive shaft popping out from the differential carrier while the knuckle was disconnected from the UCA and I was jacking up the body. With some manipulation aided by a bottle jack it went back in. I just hope the oil seal wasn't damaged. If it was, what could I expect? Leaking oil from the carrier?

The body lift so far has been a lot easier than I thought it would be. About the only thing I learned by doing rather than reading is to reuse the original metal tube that passes through the bushings when using his new poly bushings. Roger's website instructions didn't show it in the diagram, but a reread revealed a paragraph on it. I don't recall the topic ever coming up in the forum. Probably cuz it's obvious. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Back to work.

The body lift procedure seemed well documented in the 3/07 post in teh archives. Still, I haven't done it yet. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Finished one side.

Gen2 dust shields don't just bolt on. They need to be trimmed with metal shears around the lower bracket mount. The Gen2 3.5L rotor fits fine. I used the Gen1 hub, but the Gen2 would have worked too; there are only a couple of differences. On the Gen1 there seem to be some notches on the edge of 3 of the six points where the locking hubs mount; the notches don't appear to have any functional purpose. The Gen2 has a groove where the ABS ring goes. I'll post some pictures of them in the compatablity thread when I have some energy. The Gen2 hub bolts are needed with the Gen2 rotor; the Gen1's are longer and the threaded portion doesn't go far enough down to use with the Gen2 rotor. Too bad, because the Gen2 bolts from the donor were pretty beat up. I need to order 5 to replace the ones that are too far gone to use. So I won't be able to finish the truck for a couple of weeks. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I cranked down the torsion bars to make working on the front end easier. With the Gen2 UCA I have lots of positive camber. I'll need to crank them back up to correct and then see what the alignment numbers will be.

Nine or so hours of wrenching and my back is complaining. Mucho respect for people who do this for a living! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Good job (so far)! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Your comment about having lots of positive camber prompts me to ask: how did you install the mount shafts of the Gen II UCAs? With the thick side of the shaft toward the frame or the thin side toward the frame? When I first installed mine, I made the mistake of installing them with the thin side toward the frame, and this gave me WAY too much positive camber, even after cranking the t-bars. I had to un-do the mount-bolts and flip those shafts over. It wasn't terribly easy, but was possible (I didn't pull apart much else to do it IIRC...just loosened the UCA ball-joint nut). Afterward, I still had some excessive positive camber, so I ended up installing one shim in each side and that brought them in to spec with the t-bars cranked.