I've been accumulating some new nuts and bolts in preparation for the suspension work and I have a few questions.

Can anyone tell me whether Superlift supplied a longer center leaf spring bolt or if the stock length bolt is re-used with the lift block and add-a-leaf? I cannot remember and I threw away all of my stock parts.

Second, for each rear parking brake there is an s-shaped lever that is attached to the exterior of the brake drum. It connects to the parking brake cable at the top and goes into the crank bracket the bottom. My question is whether the crank lever is stock or is a longer one supplied by Superlift. I think I remember that the lever is a longer one. I'm trying to get everything straightened out before I tear it all apart only to find out I need something and have to order it.

Thanks.

You'll need the centering pins, and the parking brake is all the same, you may have replaced the brake cable however, but you be okay without replacing it...what are you going to do for U-bolts???

I'm glad to hear that the parking brake is stock. I didn't replace the cable when I first had the lift put on and it is still good. I don't really use the parking brake very often.

I bought some stock suspension components from mmiller (Matt) here on 4x4wire. I sent him a little money and he sent me the stock knuckle adaptors, u-bolts, nuts, and the crossmembers with nuts and bolts. Matt packaged everything up tightly and it got here in a few days. I cleaned them up, primed the parts, and painted them over the last couple of days. Now I have some clean black parts ready to go back on the truck.

cny97T (Zach) is another good guy and he is going to help me take my lift off and then install it on his truck. We have all the tools we should need and now we just need to find the time to do the work.

I ordered a set of metric flare nut wrenches and a tap and die set from Sears last night. The dies will be very helpful in cleaning up any rusty bolts we are going to re-use.

Harbor Freight has some 6 ton jack stands on sale for $20 and I bought 2 sets and Zach bought one set so between us we should be able to get an entire truck up in the air safely.

By this time next week we should be all done with the swap. I'll take some pics as we go along and post them for anyone interested in what is involved with the lift installation.

I crawled under the truck tonight and sprayed all the nuts and bolts with PB Blaster. I noticed that the control arm bushings are worn, especially the lower ones. I've read several posts that talk about how hard it is to remove and replace the bushings so I am going to find out tomorrow if I can pull the arms and have a shop replace the bushings. After installing the new bushings, the FSM says to torque the suspension arm shaft nuts to 166 ft/lbs. I have 2 torque wrenches and the larger one only goes up to 150 ft/lbs.

I think I'll definitely take this to a shop so it is done correctly the first time.

Zach came over tonight and we started to remove the suspension parts. The shocks, ball joints, and some of the lift brackets were easy to remove. Then we worked on the torsion bars and the control arms. I want to remove the control arms to have new bushings pressed in.

We sprayed lots of PB Blaster on the torsion bars adjuster bolts and then started to loosen them. We got both sides a little loose and then the nut/bolt tightened up and did not want to turn freely. We kept spraying more Blaster as we worked and eventually both bolts broke and punched matching holes up into the body.

We will be able to get this fixed as Zach knows how to weld, but we were both shocked that the bolts broke. Time to order some new adjuster bolts. Now we need to figure this out so it doesn't happen again.

Tomorrow we'll get back to work on removing the control arms. Then most of the front work will be done and we can think about lowering the rear suspension. That will be a piece of cake compared to the front.

If anyone has some wisdom about torsion bars feel free to share. I'd like to be able to help someone else avoid this in the future if they read some good tips here.

I've broken mine almost every time I've removed them... Gotten so that I'm keeping a spare set in the toolbox.

Make sure you get another nut for the bolt, as odds are your old one cross-threaded. Anti-Seize will help for next time. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, I'll definitely get new nuts for those torsion bar bolts. I asked a master tech today and he said he doesn't touch the torsion bars. He can count on one hand the number of times he has adjusted them over 10 years.

The new hardware should be in stock in a few days and then I'll have new bolts that should adjust easily.

On Zach's truck we will install the lift and not touch the torsion bars at all.

You won't need to unload the t-bars to install?

Nope, no need to unload the torsion bars to install the lift. All the brackets and extensions bolt on below the torsion bars/upper control arms. If you can replace your upper ball joints without relaxing the torsion bars then you can also install the lift without messing with the torsion bars. It makes the work a lot less dangerous and destructive as I found out by messing the with t-bars.

Makes sense... Just didn't think about it. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />