HoosierZ

Good to hear you got it figured out. Did you grease the upper ball joints before you put the caps on? I don’t believe mine were greased from the factory so I greased them when I installed them.

The spring tension has no effect on the lower mounting bar. Do you have a bench vise you could clamp the bar into and try rotating it by pulling on the top shock mount to spin the bar? A little heads-up on your ABS wires. When I put the new Superlift arms on mine, the ABS wires were pulled a little too tight for my liking. I popped out the connectors at the frame and flipped them to the bottom of their mounts and it gave the wires more slack.

Compress the springs and rotate the shock 180 degrees so that the angle of the bar matches the angle of the LCA.

Those are the correct Eibach front shocks. You posted the same link to the front shocks as the rear. Your truck definitely has the stamped steel arms. These are the Superlift arms you need. They are the same ones I have on my truck that had factory aluminum arms.

The Bilsteins will give you a firmer ride. Maybe look into Eibach instead. They are a little softer valving than the Bilstein and not as harsh. I went with the Eibachs to get their 2-1/2” lift springs which are a little stiffer than factory. There is nothing to set on the rear shocks. Just bolt them on and go. For upper control arms, I have the Superlift 2-3 1/2” aluminum arms on mine along with 305/65/18 KO3s on 18x9 +12mm offset wheels and I have no rubbing issues with the control arms. Compared to a 265 on the factory +24mm offset 18s, the inner sidewall of my tires is about 8mm closer to the control arms.

I replaced the pump in my 2016 last fall. It would have been nice if the engineer would have designed the tank to place the pump where it could be accessed without having to remove the tank which requires pulling back the fender liner to get to the mounting screws.

It would take one hell of a hit to damage the housing considering the 3/8” thick steel tying 8 of the bolts together and reinforcing the cover mounting flange. I don’t plan on putting it to the test. Again, the guard is mainly for looks.

Finished the guard today.

Pieces are all cut and ready to weld.

I like the skid plate, but I wouldn’t trust those straps to hold on if you actually hit the skid plate on anything. Did it come with any mounting brackets or hardware to attach it?

Fast forward almost 6 yrs and I finally started cutting out pieces for this forgotten project. Luckily, I found the cardboard templates. It is going to be made of 3/8” thick steel instead of 1/4”.

The spacers will fit, but the stock style lug nuts won’t fit through the smaller holes in my aftermarket wheels. They make different lug nuts to use with aftermarket wheels.

After I replaced my leaking valve cover gaskets, it took a while for the residual oil to burn off of the exhaust manifolds.

The spacers are the same for factory wheels and aftermarket. The lugs are different though. The factory style ET lugs have a larger shoulder diameter and larger hex size. They won’t work with my aftermarket wheels either.

You’re welcome. They are a snug fit into the bore of my factory wheels. I tapped them in with a soft dead blow hammer. I wouldn’t feel safe using the spacers without the ET lug nuts. MikeBMW posted a video, not me.

I have a set of the 15mm spacers with the ET (extended thread) lug nuts that I use with my stock wheels in the winter just to push the tires out a little. I don’t need the spacers for clearance. I have Superlift upper control arms. They appear to have the same wheel and tire clearance as the factory aluminum arms.

I’m not sure how the axles are retained on these trucks, but on the ‘88-‘98 trucks, the axles are retained by clips and they simply snap into place and can be popped out with a pry bar. The front differential doesn’t need to be disassembled to remove the stub axles. Maybe try pushing the axle back in and see if it pops into place.

Do you feel the vibration through the steering wheel? That should help tell you if it’s the front end. Adding a front differential drop will help if it’s a CV joint vibration. If you don’t feel a steering wheel vibration, it could be an issue with a rear tire.

My truck had a dash creak that drove me nuts. It turned out to be the A pillar trim rubbing against the dash speaker grill. A piece of foam tape between them fixed it.

The Eibachs with their springs definitely stiffened up the front suspension. They can be a little bit harsh at times such as the edges of bridges where there is a ledge. I feel cracks in the road a little more but they soak up larger bumps much better. They did tighten up the handling in curves with less body roll. The front end doesn’t float and bounce like it did with the factory Ranchos. I am running load range E winter tires and the BFGs are LR F. The ball joint angle wasn’t bad but the arms were nearly on the droop stops at ride height and I wanted new arms to allow me to lift the front another 1/2”. Eibach recommends not using their shocks with the stamped steel arms due to the possibility of upper ball joint separation. Mine had the aluminum control arms which appear to be the best of the 3 different styles. They have a larger ball joint than the cast steel arms and they don’t pull out of the arms like the stamped arms. These Superlift arms appear to have the same wheel and tire clearance as the factory aluminum arms but they are much thicker and they have clearance at the droop stops to allow more travel without having to cut out the stops that some aftermarket arms require. The ball joints are replaceable and happen to be the same one as an early 2000s GM HD truck according to Superlift. This week, I pulled out the shocks to replace the UCAs and while I had them out, I disassembled them and cut another circlip groove 1/2” below the bottom groove with my lathe to reduce the compression on the springs and lower the lift height around 3/4” to increase the droop travel and hopefully soften the ride a little. I added a 3/4” thick lower strut spacer which combined with the lower spring lift gave me an additional 1/2” over where it was at. It now sits at 3” of total lift. I also made and installed a 1” diff drop to save the CV joints. The ride seems to be a little better but it could just be my imagination.

Bought a set of Superlift upper control arms to fix my ball joint angle and I may add a thin spacer under the lower strut mount to add another 1/2” of lift for a total of 3” lift.

Thinking about being proactive and replacing my torque converter before it inevitably fails and does more damage to the transmission. My truck currently has 105,000 miles and I’m not having any issues. I change out 5 qts of fluid once a year. I have the thermostat pill flipped and my Hypertech programmer allowed me to reduce the converter clutch slip to hopefully lengthen its life. I came across this Luk converter that seems to address the flaws with the stock unit. It has a dual disc clutch and the mounting ears are not welded to the case which distorts the clutch surface on the stock converter. They claim 5x the life of a rebuilt converter with a billet housing. Has anyone tried the Luk yet?

Yearly clay bar and wax. Went with Cerakote ceramic sealer this time. Time will tell if it’s any good.

I would look for a different shop for your alignment. The place I buy my tires from has a nice computerized alignment rack and I’ve heard several people say that they can’t properly align a vehicle. A friend of mine had them align his 2007 Tundra and it had way too much toe in and trashed his tires fairly quickly. I aligned my 2016 Silverado twice myself using 4 jack stands, fishing line, tape measure, 12” scale, and a digital level. It has 2-1/2” lift with an Eibach stage 1 kit and 104,000 miles and I have not experienced any abnormal tire wear. The last set of tires were Mastercraft CXTs with 60k miles on them and they probably could have gone another 20k.