Refreshing my daily driver

[Tx Firefighter]

It's been awhile since I did a build thread here so I figured I'd snap some pictures and show everyone what I'm up to on my daily driver truck.

Years ago I'd have built a much nicer truck and done it much quicker. Nowadays, all of my cash goes into my business so it's pretty normal for me to have empty pockets. It's only a temporary stage in life though, I hope.

A few years ago I picked up this little short bed pickup in trade. It's kind of cool in that it's a well optioned 350/ 5 speed Silverado. The previous owner had done some things I had to fix before I could even drive it though. He'd gutted the exhaust down to having a 2 chamber Flowmaster right under the cab and nothing else. I had to drop some coin for an entirely new system from engine back. I went with Magnaflow everything including high flow converter. I also had to remove the 5 percent window tint off the side windows to get it inspected.



I noticed the truck always looked a little lowered but it didn't have any obvious lowering stuff under it. The rear leaf springs were bent in a 90 degree kink at the rear shackle. So, new Belltech 4 inch lowered leaf springs (Amazon 260 delivered) and DJM front springs along with Belltech shocks (all from Summit) got that squared away. I also powdercoated a set of 8 inch rally wheels for it.



Problem is, it sits like sh1t now. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate trucks that sit too low in the butt. I'm not from Cali and I don't wear flat bill caps, yo.

Here is where the slow part of the build comes in. I set a very strict budget for my parts and only bought what I could afford when I had cash in hand. This took 6 months unfortunately to get everything ordered and assembled.

Van rallys for the front (to be powdercoated shortly)


Shorter front tires


Every single wear part needed for the front end, all top of the line Moog Problem Solver stuff. Stainless brake hoses too. There's a lot of money sitting here.



The truck already has 2 inch springs in the front. So I got spindles to bring it down more.


Rear springs are Belltech 4 inch drop leafs, so I got this stuff to go lower.




I've lowered a ton of these trucks with the usual 4/6 stuff but this will be the first time I've ever used dropped leafs and shackles to arrive at the rear 6 inch drop. What could go wrong right ?

I have taken all next week off work so I'll be giving it hell on this thing soon. The weather forecast looks promising. Game plan is to powdercoat the wheels and spindles and then do a full redo of everything at once with the new parts.