Currently I have a 2" leveling kit installed that consists of 2" steel coil spring spacers and add-a-leafs in the rear. I'm not happy with my ride quality and will be changing some things up to make it right. 

First up is building a pair of shackle reversal brackets and shackles. This will accomplish two things:

1 - Converting from the stock tension shackle to a compression shackle improves ride quality without sacrificing load capacity.

2 - The added lift will allow the removal of the factory lift blocks and add-a-leafs, resulting in less axle wrap and a smoother ride.

A couple of things to take in to account is that as you drop the rear spring mounting points down it also changes the pinion angle and moves the axle foward. This can be taken care of with an offset 1" zero rate and 5° wedge, or an offset 1" zero rate with a 5° slope machined in, nether of which will adversely affect load carrying capacity or durability.

The front suspension is a bit more involved with multiple options for optimizing ride quality. The most common route to take is to install extended control arms, followed by long arms, and finally long radius arms. I'm thinking about going with long radius arms due to the fact that I'm not running much lift and have minimal clearance to work with. The goal is to have the arms as parallel to the ground as possible, which equates to a smoother ride. The only negative of a long radius arm set up is that it doesn't flex as much as a 4-link, since my truck doesn't see any serious off road use that's of no concern to me.

 

I'll be starting on the shackle reversal very soon as I have finally got my hands on enough 1/4" plate to build them. I will be l taking pictures and documenting the project as I go along.

I'm still going to build the shackle reversal asap, if anything it will be nice to ditch the factory blocks and remove the add-a-leaf. The steel for the project was all free, including the 1/4 and 3/8 plate along with a piece of 1x3x12 to use for the offset zero rates. The only things I have to buy are shorter U-bolts, bushings, and a pair of 4-5° axle shims. 

@JOHNFAK

I've been doing some research on the 3rd gen spring conversions and it seems they work very well with a shackle reversal. Eventually I may swap in a pair depending on how I like the ride when I done. 

22 hours ago, The_Hammer said:

I'm still going to build the shackle reversal asap, if anything it will be nice to ditch the factory blocks and remove the add-a-leaf. The steel for the project was all free, including the 1/4 and 3/8 plate along with a piece of 1x3x12 to use for the offset zero rates. The only things I have to buy are shorter U-bolts, bushings, and a pair of 4-5° axle shims. 

1

I'd love to see this done with lots of pictures.

Just my 2 cent. I've done quite a bit of off roading. And had few different set up's. Biggest thing for off road is articulation, stock truck can go through quite a bit but you will work the he'll out your suspension, frame, bodymounts, ect. Next thing is longer leafsprings and shackle flips and double shackle flips, that's what I have on my current truck. It works relatively  well and cheap. One thing I noticed is leafsprings flex a lot more and if they are old they might break. I used 8" rough country kit and before shackle flipping I could never get them flat, it would bind and lift tire of the ground. After flip I have seen them fold backwards a little and come back to normal, so far no problems but it's a toy and I use it off road only. If heims joints were cheaper, I would switch to 4 link with coil springs, best flexibility and ride quality. I had it on a truck I sold and it was great, unfortunately it's not legal on street. Not sure how newer trucks coming out with almost a 4link suspension and being legal. I'm sure someone will explain that to me.Another thing that I noticed is if I get a lot of mud on the truck with shackle flip it sags more, so yeah you might need air bags if towing heavy.

Edited December 23, 20159 yr by Dieselfuture

@Mopar1973Man

I'll be sure to document the entire process and list the materials and parts required. JOHNFAK has agreed to give me a hand in getting the dimensions right, which will definitely take some guesswork out of this. I'd like to be upfront by stating that I have NO intentions what so ever of selling shackle reversals. My goal is to get a set built for my truck, document the process, and share the information here so others can make their own without a bunch of guesswork and trial and error. 

1 minute ago, The_Hammer said:

My goal is to get a set built for my truck, document the process, and share the information here so others can make their own without a bunch of guesswork and trial and error. 

Absolutely Perfect!

@Dieselfuture

 Thanks for the input! 

I don't do any "serious" offroad driving with this truck, the harshest terrain it sees is down at Matagorda beach which has some mild dunes and wash outs. The main goal is getting enough lift to ditch the block and add-a-leaf while keeping the truck level with 2" spacers in the front. 

Can't wait to see where this goes!  The shackle flip is something I've wanted to do for a while.  I'll be waiting for pictures!

My front pair of Bilstein 5100's will be here sometime today. I ordered them from streetsideauto for $137.34 free UPS shipping, which was one of the best prices I could find. I researched the ever loving crap out of the 5100's before deciding to give them a try. I'm not expecting a magical Bilstein suspension fairy to appear after the shocks are installed and wave it's magic impact gun that sprays a combination of redbull and marvel mystery oil out the exhaust and make my truck ride like a sports car. I'm mainly looking for a more controlled ride and to stop my truck from bouncing around the road like I'm hitting switches in a low rider. 

5 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

Can't wait to see where this goes!  The shackle flip is something I've wanted to do for a while.  I'll be waiting for pictures!

I plan on doing better than just pictures, think blueprints and parts list. 

I finally got them installed a little while ago and just got done with the test drive. Overall I extremely happy with how they perform and would definitely buy them again.

Just for a point of reference... I've been running Rancho RS5000 shocks now for over 100k miles of both off-road and on-highway and still working excellent. I might have to try the Bilstein 5100 next. Kind of pricey just doing a general search on the Internet.

Put my first set of Bilstein shocks  on my 2010 1500 hemi a couple years ago and they are doing great yet, if they make it through this winter they will have outlasted any shock I have tried over the years. I used to run nothing but Rancho RS5000 as well for many years on all my rigs and never had a set make it past 40K miles or two years. That was when sears still lifetime warrantied them 100%, I quit running them the day sears quit lifetime warrantying them.

25 minutes ago, Wild and Free said:

I used to run nothing but Rancho RS5000 as well for many years on all my rigs and never had a set make it past 40K miles or two years. That was when sears still lifetime warrantied them 100%, I quit running them the day sears quit lifetime warrantying them.

Maybe you should have tried them after Sear quit warranty them. Apparently the quality improved for me to have them for so long.

$274.68 shipped is the best price I've found on a set of 4.

I'll be the first to tell ya that money damn sure doesn't grow on trees. I've never spent more than $30 per shock before so this was a big step up in price for me. I don't regret it one bit, the really help keep these heavy trucks under control. I'm this impressed and I still need to replace my swaybar end links and my control arm bushings are shot lol.

 

Got enough iron to build the brackets, shackles, and zero rates. Brackets will be 1/4", shackles 3/8", zero rates 1".

I've been doing some research on tube notching without any specialized tools and found a few videos of people using hole saws. I don't know why I didn't think of doing that myself, the results are very accurate and clean. I also found some good suppliers of DOM tubing, joints, bushings, ect, for the project. I should be able to build them for about $200. 

Just throwing this out there... 

I went from a 2" spring spacer to a 1" spring spacer and my ride quality was night and day. I was floored at how much of a change 1" made in the ride based on control arm angle.

 

Dropping to 1" would also allow you to remove the AAL, which I have had nothing but horrible luck with and always advise against.

 

I am quite excited to see what you come up with thou!! Just wanted to throw the under $200 option out there.

 

 

I also run MaxxLinks and found no change to ride quality with them over the OEM 3rd gen models.

Speaking of 3rd/4th gen's if you do the swap to the 3rd gen rear leaves there are 2 basic spring packs offered. There is a 4/1 spring pack found on 03-13 2500's (also 03-09 3500 SRW 3500's) and the 3/1 pack found on DRW's and 10+ 3500 SRW's. There is also a 2 leaf upper overload that was found on 03-09 3500 SRW's and all DRW's. The 3/1 spring pack is only rated 7% stiffer than the 4/1 spring pack. I have driven both and the 3/1 is slightly stiffer but only if you are really paying attention.

 

You will love the 5100's. I grew up running Rancho and now wouldn't touch them. They are overpriced short-lived junk.

@AH64ID

I'm actually wanting to go a little higher in the front via a pair of 2.5" - 3" lift springs later on. As is the truck rides better than it did before the spacers were installed since installing the 5100's, I absolutely LOVE these shocks. My control arm bushings are in pretty rough shape and need to be replaced so I might as well build a new set of arms while I'm doing it, right? Lol. Honestly I just enjoy doing things like this so I don't mind building longer arms.  

 I already pulled the AAL's, cut them down, and I'm using them as 1/2" lift zero rates. The truck sits almost level right now and rides MUCH better in the rear, even with wore out shocks.

Thanks for the info on the 3rd gen leaf springs. I'm still not sure if I'm going to do it anytime soon, it will depend on if I can find some good springs in the local salvage yards for a good price. 

I'm excited to see what I'm going to come up with myself! Lol.

If I didn't mind losing the effective gearing by going with a 265/70R19.5 I would probably be looking into a 3" lift and longer control arms, but this truck does a bit of towing.  

Your not going to lose much gearing going from a 245/70R19.5 to a 265/70R19.5. With a 1" lift your probably good to go since the tires are only 10.4" wide.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/tirecalc?tires=245-70r19.5-265-70r19.5

14 minutes ago, The_Hammer said:

Your not going to lose much gearing going from a 245/70R19.5 to a 265/70R19.5. With a 1" lift your probably good to go since the tires are only 10.4" wide.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/tirecalc?tires=245-70r19.5-265-70r19.5

Based on the zero offset wheels I would need longer control arms at a minimum. 

The 265's are 23 rev/mile fewer which is 3.7%. It doesn't seem like much but it is enough to effect 6th gear towing below 72-73 mph.