Need little bag over axle advice

[kev2809]

I want to kind of re-do my upper brackets I did years ago. they are ugly and were made of scrap plate I had around at the time. my main issue is I feel I don't get the full stroke of the bag with these plates like this. when I removed the bag and jacked up the axle til the TA hit...I have a nearly 5 inch gap from the top plate and bottom plate. my dominator 2600s are 2.8" fully collapsed. if I'm adding this right, I'm losing just over 2 inches of lift. I'm thinking of cutting out the plates and welding 2x2 tubing with new plates. this would drop the new plates the 2" needed to get me more lift.

2nd option would be to keep the top mounts, but reweld them and beef them up..BUT, either add 2" spacer to make up the difference. or....switch to Firestone sleeve bags. they are 4.5" collapsed, with 13.8 max height with 5.5" diameter. ride height is suggested at 8.5". when jacking up my axle to where I would think the ride height should be..it's about 9" from top plate to bottom axle plate. which sounds like the sleeve bags are the way to go...then all I would need to do is just reweld those top mounts to beefed them up..no spacer needed.

my overall concern after reading some how to's is that the bottom axle plates should be 0 degrees at ride height when welded on. I don't know how I did these the first time....but when I set the axle at ride height, the angle is about 9 degrees on the axle brackets. when it's bottomed out (laid out) it was about 4 degrees. I mean, I never seen unevenness when the bag was deflated....but is this going to be a problem? the bottom plates are welded in pretty good and would hate to try to cut them out.

these pictures are the axle set to about ride height