My daily driver/beater : How I turned lemons in lemonade

[Tx Firefighter]

Scot, you know me. I can hardly talk in a straight line for very long without veering off on a tangent. Squirrel !

I initially thought about AOL. Simple and cheap. Then I got under my truck and was looking at my leafs. They are 7 leaf packs. I just can't warm up to the idea of thinning the pack out then subjecting it to fairly extreme cycling afterwards. I've seen more than a few leaf springs break over the years and I just keep thinking about what a catastrophe it would be if that old tired main leaf decided that cycling way up and down was just too much.

The best vibe I've gotten so far has been from Ekstensive down in Houston. They sell an all encompassing rear kit for a fair enough price. And their email responses were quick and concise. He said if I'd give him some money, I could drive down in 2-3 weeks and pick up my kit to save shipping.

Their kit is a 2 link. I know the downsides to 2 link configurations, but I'm really not convinced it would be too bad of a deal for me. I probably haven't exceeded 70 miles per hour this year. All my driving is tooling around rural highways at 60 miles per hour. And all my engines are stock. I'm like an old man in my driving habits. If I get a ticket, my chief is liable to take away the keys for my fire truck and stick me working on an ambulance or something. Hence, I drive very conservatively. All I ask of my rear suspension when complete is to go up and down when I work the bags and to spend the rest of its time following the front suspension down the road and maybe move up and down somewhat when I hit a dip or bump in the road.

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I like their kit because it's just a slam dunk to install. You drop the bridge onto the frame until it bottoms out and stitch it in place with the welder. Then bolt the link bars to the factory front hangers. From there finish out the details.

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And I can live with the amount of intrusion into the bed floor.

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Sure, its a bare bones non flashy setup, but the quick install and low price are attractive. I simply can't let scope creep set in here. Besides from DM install and rear air install, I still have to rebuild my engine and do a bunch of sheetmetal and hopefully paint work over the winter too. I don't want to get bogged down with one aspect of the project. I'm not trying to build a nice truck here. I'm trying to build a budget minded fun truck here that looks somewhat radical.