look at how tall your ride really is, you wanna take the butt end down a hair?
holy crap that is some tire clearance
heres the problem, dodge installed a couple extra leaf springs.
what a waste, the bottom 2 arent even doing anything
ok, jack the frame up just enought to take the weight off the tire, but not actually lift the axle, this takes a lil trial and error
since im working on gravel i have an issue with the jacks and stands settling
with the truck securely up on atleast one jackstand
(i have another in the back under the hitch as a secondary)
now you can go ahead and remove the 4 nuts off the ubolts,
this releases the leaf plate
here you see that the leaf pack is bolted together
so, just remove that bolt with a socket on the bottom and a wrench on the top
when you get the bolt apart, the bottom 2 literally
fall out
(kinda freaked me out)
heres where it might get a lil tricky, put your helmets on for this part,
the leaf bolt is going to be too long,
so, heres the easy way to cut a bolt since im too lazy to go get new ones
install the nut on the bolt, tighten it down so that the "excess" is equal to the amount you need to remove
which in this case, is the thickness of the 2 leafs we dropped off
then, cut it and do a little grinding to smooth the edges out.
this way you can just remove the nut and it cleans the threads up.
now you can re bolt the leafs together,
what i did was used a bottle jack to "persuade" the bolt back into the holes in the axle mount and the leaf plate
now, this is important,
do not do a full torque on the u-bolts yet!
go ahead and tighten them pretty good with a ratchet/socket.
then drop the truck back onto the ground.
now, go ahead and torque the piss outta the ubolts with the full weight of the truck on the leafs.
i used a 2' breaker bar till they felt nice and solid
well, its a lil better,
ride quality is greatly improved, as in the suspension is no longer like a rock
almost rides like a car
it only dropped the truck an inch.5 but its better