I think I've already mentioned my flipped tierod mod, but I was finally able to wrap that up. I went back and forth about whether I wanted to get one of those (expensive!) kits, or find a way to do it myself. I looked at tapered sleeves and couldn't find any that were right. Looked at getting spindles that haven't been drilled yet but CPP said nope. Ultimately I decided to just ream out the hole from the bottom like the VW crew does. I know this leaves an hourglass shaped hole in the spindle and reduces contact area on the tierod end, but if you look at the tierod compared to the depth of the hole it's not as much of a concern as you'd think. The tierod only engages in about 2/3 of the hole anyway, so tapering it from the opposite side results in a loss of only 1/6 of the contact depth. I'm not towing, autocrossing, or running large wheels so I think it will be just fine! I will monitor them closely for a while and if I see any excessive wear I will readdress this again later. By the way, if you wanted to know, the correct reamer is PN 89411 from Speedway which is a 1.5" per foot taper.
Here is a comparison before and after the tierod flip. My tierod angle was terrible after sectioning the crossmember. With the sectioning, every suspension point moved up 1.5" except the inner tierod connection point. This created a drastic bump steer condition that needed to be addressed. After flipping the tierod, the angle is pretty much back to where it needs to be.
Before
After
The clearance to the wheel is close but it will work. This is a stock 15x6 wheel, so anything 15" with more backspacing would not work. If you're running larger wheels, then no problem.
While I was working on the front suspension, I decided to finally finish off the notch on the upper arm. This is for clearance to the steering shaft since I sectioned the crossmember. Normally you don't have to notch this much, but since I also body dropped the truck 1" I had to go a little deeper.
