2014+ Lowering / Drop Kits

nate538 · September 4, 2014

thanks, I want to do a front and rear drop so that's why I was looking at the whole kit.

it costs more to buy it all separate and the u-bolts aren't sold for you its something you just have to buy on your own hoping it fits right

maybe I can figure out a way to not need the kit to do it, I saw someone say they just slipped the front strut under the mount and bolted it in place to get the 2" drop and its free except the bolts you buy so if that's accurate all I need to buy is the rear shackles and figure out what to do about the u-bolts being too long

Imo I wouldn't do the strut under the control arm thing. When you move the strut under the arm your putting the entire weight of your front end on 2 bolts. For the rear I'm currently running factory u bolts with the blocks on top the springs, which isn't the best idea either. Soon I'll be changing to 2wd nbs u bolts

keakar · September 4, 2014

Imo I wouldn't do the strut under the control arm thing. When you move the strut under the arm your putting the entire weight of your front end on 2 bolts. For the rear I'm currently running factory u bolts with the blocks on top the springs, which isn't the best idea either. Soon I'll be changing to 2wd nbs u bolts

yea I hadn't thought about how its supported but it cant have that much weight since they use plastic spacers for all of the lift kits for it

mine is the 2wd so to get 3" im going 2" drop shackle and removing the block making the u-bolts be 1 1/2" too long after, so I should get about a 3 1/4" drop in the rear

so since swapping the strut mount to he bottom is out, for the front I cant decide the best way to drop it, there are drop spindles and then there are drop strut bodies you reuse the stock hardware with and they both average $150-$175 in price. I want to leave stock unchanged as much as possible and do the simpler less intrusive mod to it which I think is the drop strut but it is also the most scary dealing with spring compression and trusting I can put it all back together right and safely

Edited September 4, 2014 by keakar

nate538 · September 4, 2014

yea I hadn't thought about how its supported but it cant have that much weight since they use plastic spacers for all of the lift kits for it

mine is the 2wd so to get 3" im going 2" drop shackle and removing the block making the u-bolts be 1 1/2" too long after, so I should get about a 3 1/4" drop in the rear

so since swapping the strut mount to he bottom is out, for the front I cant decide the best way to drop it, there are drop spindles and then there are drop strut bodies you reuse the stock hardware with and they both average $150-$175 in price. I want to leave stock unchanged as much as possible and do the simpler less intrusive mod to it which I think is the drop strut but it is also the most scary dealing with spring compression and trusting I can put it all back together right and safely

Personally I like drop spindles because they maintain your factory strut and suspension angles, therefore ride quality is unchanged

keakar · September 4, 2014

Personally I like drop spindles because they maintain your factory strut and suspension angles, therefore ride quality is unchanged

thanks, im thinking just about all of them are roughly the same quality as its just a chunk of metal so paying extra for a big name brand isn't needed or am I wrong?

any brand recommendations to get or to stay away from

racerkvn · September 4, 2014

My strut has been under the control arm for 12,800 miles has been flawless. The dealership had my truck last week to do the free oil change, tire rotation and vehicle inspection and they said everything including all the suspension looked "great". I was just as reserved about the idea of mounting the strut under the control arm too, but it's has worked out fine for me. I couldn't imagine a company like Rough Country would put their business in jeopardy by selling a kit that wouldn't support the vehicle. If you plan to beat on the truck and abuse it then it may very well break, mine lives a good life, well used but not abused. I also used the factory U-bolts with the factory block removal. The nut is in NEW threads at that position and doesn't require a new set of U-bolts. I think where people run out of thread length is because they run one nut up too tight before getting the other nut in the same position. I ran mine up and snugged them to the point they were even and THEN tightened the nuts. I didn't run out of threads.

I check the front end and the rear end periodically myself and as I mentioned, I haven't had a single issue with the suspension.

racerkvn · September 4, 2014

I also prefer drop spindles, but when I lowered my 2014 there were no spindles available for it and was told the spindles for a 2013 would not work without being modified. That was a bummer because I have the adjustable BellTech 647SP kit I bought for my 2013 crew cab collecting dust in the shop. None of that kit would work on the 2014. Struts were different, spindles were different and the flip kit was different.

nate538 · September 4, 2014

My strut has been under the control arm for 12,800 miles has been flawless. The dealership had my truck last week to do the free oil change, tire rotation and vehicle inspection and they said everything including all the suspension looked "great". I was just as reserved about the idea of mounting the strut under the control arm too, but it's has worked out fine for me. I couldn't imagine a company like Rough Country would put their business in jeopardy by selling a kit that wouldn't support the vehicle.

If you buy the kit it's one thing, but he was talking about just going and getting the bolts from the hardware store. Either way I'm still not entirely comfortable with the idea, just because if I pull the bolts out of my strut I could probably drive around the block with no issues. If you do that with the strut under the arm your not going anywhere. I'm sure there's plenty of people that will have no issues with it but it's not for me

nate538 · September 4, 2014

thanks, im thinking just about all of them are roughly the same quality as its just a chunk of metal so paying extra for a big name brand isn't needed or am I wrong?

any brand recommendations to get or to stay away from

I don't have any personal experience with them since I have a 4wd but I did come across this in my research

September 4, 2014

I used belltech on my last truck. Love it. I just bought a mcgaughys kit for my 14 so we will c. I don't think nu can go wrong between the 2

keakar · September 4, 2014

I don't have any personal experience with them since I have a 4wd but I did come across this in my research

well that is a good point to make, I thought they all used the same basic patterns so im shocked to see some change geometry.

keeping the stock geometry is the whole point of using drop spindles in the first place, at least for me it is.

mcgaugheys isn't much more then the others out there at $283 and I don't trust those $150-$160 no name ones, because i think they might be made in china with sub par metal

as to the rough country under mount strut bolt design, its scary as hell. sure they are grade 9 bolts but the weight of the entire front end its on roughly an 1/8" thick nut outer ring so if the threads in the nut or bolt heads give way and let go, then you spear the strut into the ground and can have violent and completely out of control serious consequences from it beyond a totaled truck but maybe serious injury or worse.

to be honest I don't know how any liability insurance company would give them coverage selling that kit unless they included some sort of clam shaped cast irion metal cover that can hold that much weight in a failure scenario

Edited September 5, 2014 by keakar

Frog3151 · September 5, 2014

im new to this page, i have a 2014 gmc sierra, reklez in pearland installed my 3/6 drop with mcgauhys everything. i have the slight vibration @ around 50 mph when excelerating hard. ive been reading about shimming the rear end or shortening the driveshaft about 1.5 inches. my question is, if i shim the rear diff where do i put the shims? can someone post a picture of two please. besides the vibration everything else is great. im also running 22" dub ballers with 284/45/22 with no rubbing in the front at all.

September 5, 2014

im new to this page, i have a 2014 gmc sierra, reklez in pearland installed my 3/6 drop with mcgauhys everything. i have the slight vibration @ around 50 mph when excelerating hard. ive been reading about shimming the rear end or shortening the driveshaft about 1.5 inches. my question is, if i shim the rear diff where do i put the shims? can someone post a picture of two please. besides the vibration everything else is great. im also running 22" dub ballers with 284/45/22 with no rubbing in the front at all.

They go between the Axel housing and the leaf springs. I had to use 4° on my 13 CC. Will be lowering my 14 in another month or so

keakar · September 5, 2014

They go between the Axel housing and the leaf springs. I had to use 4° on my 13 CC. Will be lowering my 14 in another month or so

can anyone confirm the shim size needed to be used for 2" drop shackles along with removing the stock 1.25" block over the axle?

mine will be done just as in the picture and I don't know the procedure to calculate the right measurements and I don't trust myself to do it correctly even if it was explained to me.

also please confirm this, from what I am seeing this picture shows the orientation as if it were for a lift kit so if im lowering the truck then the rear end turns down and not upwards so for a lowering kit the shim flips around in the other direction with the fat part end going on the rear side closest to the back bumper correct?

Edited September 5, 2014 by keakar

racerkvn · September 5, 2014

If I remember right, the higher upper ball joint mount allows the spindle to be used on a 4WD and 2WD truck and keeps the axle boot away from the upper ball joint at all angles. The McGaughys may require more of the ball joint shaft to be cut off below the ball joint nut. I've never ran McGaughys spindles, so maybe somebody with a 4WD could chime in. I have ran Belltech spindles on about 6 vehicles and with no issues at all with bumpsteer on everything from street driven trucks and cars to full on drag cars. It's when you combine the spindle with springs or struts for a lower drop that you can possibly run into bumpsteer headaches.

Just as information, the grade 9 hardware exceeds the factory bolt specs, which I "think" is grade 5, and the two grade 9 bolts holding the strut mount will exceed 1 ball joint nut holding the spindle. Mine has been flawless and I'm sure the company has many other trucks using the same set up. As I mentioned before, if it wasn't "safe" a company like Rough Country wouldn't put their business on the line for it. Can it be broken... sure if you abuse it. Some people including myself can break an anvil. It takes sense enough to know that you've lowered the truck and what the new limitations will be.

racerkvn · September 5, 2014

There is no one shim fits all, that's why pinion shims do not come with any kits on the market... tolerance stack ups in the frame will make each truck slightly different and some more pronounced than others. If I were you I'd buy some 2 degree shims and after you lower it see how it does. You may not need them. I ran into this on my 2013 crew cab most people with the exact same drop kit had no trouble and after much research is why I bought THAT kit, but mine was so far out of whack it was almost ridiculous. It also made me not want to lower this 2014 as much as I did my previous truck just to steer clear of issues on another brand new truck.