Thinking of building a 2nd gen lift kit...

[410Fortune]

Desertspives blown SOHC 5 speed Ranger with Dixon Bro kit and rear long travel

Very nice truck and a nice guy!

http://www.fourwheeler.com/projectbuild/129_0608_rangerunner_2002_ford_ranger_4x4/

Im not sure about the limit strap location but thats no biggie.

 

[MountaineerGreen]

:drool:

That is sweet looking!

 

[410Fortune]

I bet it rides so nice......

 

[FROADER]

I remember when he first got that thing. I went to his house to check it out.

 

[kert0307]

Desertspives blown SOHC 5 speed Ranger with Dixon Bro kit and rear long travel...

That is a nice truck!

CG's truck is stock except for a BL, better shocks, and tires right? I guess it just goes to show haw capable explorers are.

Do you see what I'm talking about when I say that I want to try to improve the up travel of the setup? Because in about every picture of an IFS truck flexing from the front, one side's a-arms are almost flat, and the other is all the way down...for the most travel, wouldn't it be logical to have a setup that can travel upwards almost as much as down?

 

[410Fortune]

8" of travel can perform as well as 15" of travel, its more about the quality of travel.
With bump travel you can close to bottoming out the frame/chasis, tires up into the firewall, etc

Bump travel is good, and droop travel is good, getting more of both is great, but its easier to build a truck to get more droop, so thats what people do and it works well!

Whats important is the tuning of the shocks and springs, and that the rear end can keep up with the front.
The Dixon kit (I know I keep talking about it but its the only kit available short of having a fab shop build you an a arm setup) cycles 14" I believe, thats is ALOT, that setup can take alot of abuse

 

[kert0307]

ditto 410, man if you could design i cv with a slip joint like what is on a drive shaft that would be good.

I saw that rancho, (I think) makes a kit for chevy's with slip jointed cv's on extreme 4x4 a few days ago, but can't find anything about it on their site. It look pretty sweet, and it is suppose to be able to work at 40 degree angles.

 

[BogFather]

so have you had any more luck getting this lift for the 2nd gen's built kert?? any really excited and interested to see what comes of it all

 

[kert0307]

I won't have time to actually build it untill the summer. Right now I'm just researching and getting some of the angles figured out before hand. I also have figured out what bushings, ball joints ect. that I'm probably going to use.

 

[kert0307]

Question: Do you think it would be a good idea to move the tires/axle forward around an inch when I do this to make more clearance room with the firewall? Shouldn't be too hard to do with the drop down brackets, and arms. I know a few people have done this when they SAS.

 

[FROADER]

I would say moving it forward is a good idea.

 

[410Fortune]

hell yeah the ex would really benefit from moving it forward even 1/2", if you can pull it off

 

[kert0307]

...... if you can pull it off

ye of little faith...

 

[kert0307]

I found that kit that I was talking about earlier, turns out it was made by Rough Country. Here's a pict from their website. High angle, and a slip yoke.

6" EX-series Suspension Kit: chevy truck

 

[AMMO_HOOAH]

This is CG's Ex last May in Moab:

The rest of his pics are here. http://www.explorerforum.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=3512&ppuser=

Here is the broken part of it too.

Are you sure that's the Dixon kit? I could swear the kit uses coil overs up front and removes the torsion bars. Not to mention that lower arm looks awfully stock, but I have been wrong before.

 

[kert0307]

thats not the dixon kit, its a basically stock explorer frontend with some good shocks on it.

 

[kert0307]

Well, semester is over next week, so time to start working on this again. Just letting you all know I haven't forgotten about this project...

 

[dkchrist]

if you can figure out the better cv let me know porsch cvs are an upgrade and rough country has a way to put them on f150s if that makes a difference

 

[kert0307]

So... someone convince me to make this project a reality. The more I think about the type of wheeling around where I live, and the future use of the explorer, as it pretty much isn't my daily driver anymore, a linked SAS looks like a much better option...

 

[Turdle]

Once a thread reaches 2 pages there is no turning back.