[wixthedog]

Good new! It took longer than I had hoped with the holidays, a couple odd welding projects, and of course the truck fighting back but this phase is done. Well, about as done as it ever is.

I found some local leaf springs, a 5 pack, from a Suburban pretty close by on Christmas Eve so I snatched those up and it fixed the problem I had with the rear. I suspected there was an issue when I found the cracked leafs but you never know until its too late and the work is done usually. My experience level in removing and replacing leaf spring bushings has gone up exponentially...

I had two frustrations with the McGaughys drop spindles, the 3 threaded holes for the rotor backing plates were too short for OEM bolts so I had to clean up the threads and then cut down some bolts to 1/2" rather than 3/4". Not a big deal and easy enough. One spindle had the nut threads cut on the top edge where the step was made for the washer so starting it was a real PITA. Overall design and quality was much better than Western Chassis so it was all acceptable. This combination of wheel/spindle/spring allowed plenty of room and no trimming was needed on the LCA.

The flip kit instructions recommended using the forward most hole when mounting the axle so that the driveline would not self clearance into the transmission but that was not correct for my application. I switched it to the rear hole, moving the axle more forward, and everything was peachy.

It's the first dropped truck I have ever owned so driving is a bit different than my typical 4x4's - I've already scraped pavement a few times! It looks cool and I am pretty happy, I may end up putting the factory front springs back in to raise the front a little bit to help with driveability.

So what's next? I'm going to enjoy driving it for a bit and then I'll dig into the next thing on the long list.