Noob needing some suspension help...

[bigo181979]

OK first I will give you what I have 68 Short bed fleet side w/ 4 wheel drum brakes and No power assist, it is a 6 bolt as well.
The front end needs to be rebuilt (ball joints, tie rod ends, the works) my plans are to lower the truck and eventually put front disks w/power booster, but right now all I can afford to do is the drop and the front end rebuild. I plan on keeping the six lug setup for now as well as drum brakes.

My question is this who makes drop spindles and springs that are gonna allow me to upgrade to disks later???

[65-72 chevytoys]

Check around some of the site vendors I am sure they will have what you are looking for as far as rebuild kits, drop springs and spindles that will allow you to upgrade brakes later. Early Classic has them if you don't find what you are looking for.

Welcome from FL you have found a great wealth of knowledge.

[whatnow123]

I might be wrong here, but I don't think you can drop the front much without really messing up the geometry of the front end if you don't do drop spindles as well. So, if you do the drop spindles, you have to do disk brakes as drums won't work, and since you are getting the disks, might as well get the 5 lug one's as you will probably want to switch this in the future as well. Now, since you have 5 lugs up front, your current rims won't fit, so you might as well get the one's you want for the front.... etc

This is what happens to me... doing one thing leads to 12 others. I'm fortunate that it's just a "hobby truck" and I don't need drive it (in fact I haven't really driven it yet, just around the block once) but if you are on a budget and need to drive your truck, choose your mods carefully as it's rarely just the one thing you are replacing/redoing.

[SCOTI]

They do not make a drop spindle for drums.

You can do a 'mild' drop (mild = < 3" front drop) w/o detrimental affect to the suspension geometry. You could purchase a front-end rebuild kit & dropped springs from one of the board vendors or get the rebuild parts from a local parts house & cut 1 coil from the stock springs.

There are also companys that sell dropped a-arms which lower the spring pocket. These can be used w/stock drum brakes but the lowest part of the dropped suspension (bottom of the a-arm) is now even lower & can be problematic (my buddy totaled his 65swb when one of his dropped a-arms hit a city manhole cover that was sticking up out of the ground!!).