Long Travel Leaves

We also needed to mount the rear shocks, so Jim Pierce took it upon himself to make a new rollcage and incorporate the rear shock mounts into it.

The old rollcage in this Blazer was made very poorly, and the hardtop did not even fit with it in. Pierce plated the frame with 3/16-inch steel where the cage's tubing attaches to the body.

The lower mounts were welded on top of the spring plates and made to accept two shocks in case we wanted to add a second shock to each rear corner. For now we chose to go with just one shock per side in the rear in order to keep the back seat. But if we ever decide differently, all we would have to do is lose the rear seat and weld a couple of tabs onto the rear shock crossmember, and we would be good to go to a dual rear-shock setup. Every now and then we actually like to plan for possible future changes.

To complement the front, we used Off Road Design's shackle-flip kit to turn the tension shackle into a compression-shackle design. This gave us about a 4-inch lift in the rear, plus it angled the pinion for better rear driveline angle. We used a very soft 13-leaf spring pack that gave us another 2 inches of lift. The ORD shackle flip allowed us to run a much flatter spring, therefore allowing for better flex than a 4-inch-taller leaf spring would have.

We opted for these pyramid-type bumpstops from Energy Suspension. They allow 3-4 inches of inhibited cushioning before bottoming out on themselves. We're not sure that we like where we chose to place the bumpstops, but this was the easiest place to mount to for now, and if we find a problem with the setup, we'll change it later. That's what trial and error is all about.

When we put the front leaves on, we had to make new shackles and also drill a new shackle-mount hole. The new shackle was 2 inches longer, plus the shackle-mount hole in the frame was about 2 inches lower than the original. When you think about it, it's obvious: The pinion was going to be rotated down, along with the knuckles. Not only did this give a bad driveline angle, but it also gave us scary caster issues. The front wheels were now trying to steer under the truck when we cranked the wheel. To address this problem, we went back to Deaver to get some 4-degree bronze shims. This rotated the axle back up and alleviated much of the pinion angle and caster problem.

When we put the front end together, we knew we'd have around a 6-inch lift, to match the rear end. It turned out to be a little higher than that: around 7 inches. We also had a very soft spring pack in the rear, so it made the rear sag even more as the weight of the truck was biased toward the rear with the taller front end. We liked the super-soft ride of the rear, so we didn't want to add another leaf to the pack, but we didn't want to add a conventional block, no matter how short it was. Stephen Watson at Off Road Design again had the answer for our rear end with his 1-inch zero-rate add-a-leaves that include new centerpins and tie into the leaf pack. This was all it took to level the truck.

While we were back at Deaver grabbing some shims, we also got some new long centerpins. Our leaf packs were too thick for any of the supplied centerpins to be long enough to tie the zero-rate add-a-leaves and front shims into the leaf packs. When you pull your centerpins, your leaves will probably misalign themselves, forcing you to try to jimmy the centerpin through each leaf separately. When doing this, try using a punch to line up the holes, and a prybar to separate the leaves enough to allow you to see what you're doing.

The last issue we came across was the shackle hitting the body mount when fully drooped in the front. We can address this one of two ways: We could trim the front of the body mount to allow the shackle to flip more forward, or we could use limiting straps on the axle. We chose limiting straps since we did not really want the shackle swinging any more forward and possibly flipping the wrong way.