Lowering a Chevy Silverado to a Street Truck Stance - Truck Tech S1, E6

today we're lowering our 1993 Silverado to get the right stance then we're shooing it with some larger and more modern wheels and tires this is there is eNOS FK line it's all today here on truck Tech [Music] hey thanks for watching truck tech well this is our 1993 full-size 1500 series two-wheel drive short bed Chevy pickup with 260 thousand miles on the clock and although it might look exactly the same as the last time you saw it we've actually been working hard on it making sure that the brakes work when we hit the pedal making sure that it doesn't pee out fluids every time it's parked and making sure that it runs good enough so that where we can get some more miles out of it now this body style stayed virtually the same from 1988 right up until about 1999 making it arguably the next current classic and although we think it's a good-looking body style there's always room for improvement now aesthetically speaking there's a couple of things this truck is screaming for a paint job and an improved stance now we've done some lowering kits before but they've always been in the moderate range so this time we're gonna get a little bit more aggressive because why would we lift up a two-wheel drive truck and throw some big old mud tires on it we want to make a nice clean street truck now to get our truck sitting closer to the pavement we just went to the Summit Racing website entered in our make and model and took a look at some of the options they had available we settled on a five six lowering kit which is going to give us five inches of drop up front and six inches at the back of the truck now to get that done up front it uses a combination of lowering springs and drop spindles out back since we want six inches of drop we have to do something aggressive so we went with a flip kit which is going to move the leaf springs from the top of the axle where they are now to the bottom of the axle and that necessitates a C notch of the frame just so you can maintain a little bit of suspension travel and these suckers will bolt in we also went to Summit and picked up four new shocks that'll match our soon-to-be lowered ride height [Music] now even being able to throw a socket onto the ball joint Castle nuts well it was like an archaeological dig it a hunt-and-peck to even find the cotter pins hey there's my guess is this truck spent some time on a cattle ranch despite the miles on this truck the ball joints are still in pretty good shape so we didn't want to use the pickle fork in the impact gun on them we wanted to keep the boots intact so we use the tried old true method of whooping it with the bfh one brought duties now if you're just doing a mild drop with just Springs you still have to take the spindles off ours is pretty aggressive so the spindles get replaced as well as the spring to allow the control arm to swing down far enough to add access to the coil strengths we're removing the sway bar end links I'm also disconnecting the bottom half of the shock so I can climb up in the engine bay and remove the scud nut and remove the shock all together Chuck there's some that suck but sometimes these parts store shocks don't come off like you expect them to that shock just came apart didn't it yeah that's hilarious so you one of the $19 jack something missing here something's missing all right [Music] well I guess there's more than one way to remove a shock all right now the only thing we've got left to do is to remove the coil spring and we can do that by lowering this jack now I've done this enough on this particular model of truck to know that this spring isn't under that much of a compression load and I'd probably be okay just keeping a firm hand on it and using a pry bar to pry the bottom of the spring out but just to be safe we've got a length of chain run down through the spring and the lower control arm so can't go very far and won't become a temporary part of my face or rib cage and with the Jack out of the way we can use a pry bar to gently pry the spring out of its seat chain worked [Music] now to make sure our little rubber coil-spring isolator doesn't go anywhere during installation a couple pieces of masking tape ought to keep it pinned down once you have the spring in place make sure you index it correctly so that the end of the spring sits in the little recess on the bottom of the control arm pocket then you can use the jack and put a little bit of pressure on the spring and compress it enough so you can install the spindle and shock good now our replacement shock is one of these fancy newfangled one-piece shocks [Music] now we did have a captured nut break free on the inside of the control arm so we just use a nut and bolt to replace it good thing this isn't a show truck you can follow that with the installation of the new drop spindle for McCoys just tighten down the castle later nuts and secure them with cotter pins [Music] now the drop spindle provides about two inches of drop and if you take a look and compare them to the original the spindle pin height is about two inches higher letting the truck sit lower to the ground after a quick cleanup and a little bit of paint we reinstall the brake dust shield and our new rotors [Music] and installed the outer wheel bearing set the preload on the rotors secured it with a cotter pin and covered everything up with a dust cap [Music] then we reinstalled our high mileage but still functioning brake calipers secured the bolts then finally added the tie rod end and locked it down into place but we stopped short of added the sway bar end links because we've got another upgrade in mind we'll get to that later coming up how to lower the rear end by SI notching the frame and later you joint rebuilding tips hey welcome back we are in the middle of dropping the suspension on our full-size Chevy pickup doing a pretty aggressive five six drop now out front you'd think with all the steering and geometry business going on that it would be a lot more work to drop it in the front well not so much it may be more complicated but certainly not more work in the back we're doing essentially what is known as a flip kit which is putting the axle over top to the leaf spring pack quite simple operation however it creates another problem which is suspension travel here so we have to do some sort of a relief on the frame rail it's a dual parallel section of frame rail not too bad but we have to have access to it so we're gonna essentially blow everything apart get access to everything all at once and do the kit the smart way now thinking ahead we want to fix the rusty cab corners in the bed has to be off for that so loosening all the hardware well it just makes sense and it saves us time down the road dressed to tear down it's fairly simple and even though there's 260 thousand miles on this truck it has been worked on in the past so these fasteners aren't rusted or frozen in those of you Chevy truck eagle-eyes out there you've probably noticed that we've got mismatched u-bolts and non stock rear shackles so this trucks been into before and it may give us too much drop in the back we'll just have to figure it out later here you can clearly see the non stop shackles that are obviously a couple of inches longer than they should be but the multiple bolt locations may solve the problem before it's even a problem all right but the axle out of the way and the frame rail cleaned up a little bit went ahead mark the holes for the CE nosh now to do that I just used the C notch plates as a template mark the holes that need to be drilled eight of them plus Mark the C notch where it's gonna go before we start cutting the C notch we're gonna drill a couple of holes on these inside corners just for a little extra strength now just like anytime you drill into a frame rail you need to check the backside of it to make sure you're not gonna run into any wiring harnesses fuel lines or brake lines now the purpose of the holes on the inside of these corners is to prevent a stress location where two straight edges meet it could potentially lead to a stress crack or fatigue crack the drilled hole provides a nice smooth radius and will hopefully prevent that now we're using a 40,000 thick cutoff wheel that we picked up from industrial default on a four and a half inch angle grinder but you can use a reciprocating saw and achieve the same results our cutoff wheel got us through both frame rails now if you're doing this at home make sure you support the back end of the frame rails before you make your cut to make sure that the frame rail doesn't move around on you once you remove half the metal that way you can bolt the see notch back in place and lock it in position nice and straight and with the frame rail carved up go ahead and throw the see notch plate back in position and verify that the holes you marked are in the right spot we're good or did it drill kiha start it out with eight inch pilot holes just to make sure the hole was centered and makes things easier for us to drill then we jumped up to about a 5/16 bit followed by a half inch bit you can go straight to the half inch bit if you want to for me it's a little bit easier and a little bit quicker to step it up and I just knock the birds down on the end of the holes so the see notch plate fit nice and flush and since we don't want this raw steel rusting and more than the steel that's around it we wiped it down with a little acetone it got rid of any last remaining metal splinters and hit it with a coat of paint just to make sure corrosion stayed at bay now the plate gets bolted in place with eight grade eight fasteners on the face of it along with two of them on the bottom side of the frame rail one on either side of the notch we've got a little bit of work to do on that one and for you guys that are concerned with cutting into the frame rail this much well don't worry about it too much does this plate build a lot of that strength back into it see not to complete hey guys welcome back to the shop well we're just about done installing the lowering kit on our 93 Chevy and since we had the drive shaft out to install the rear axle flip kit we figured now would be a good time to replace some of these high mileage and worn-out u-joints now we've shown you you joint replacement in the past but I don't think we've shown you this GM style that isn't held in place by circlips but held in place by nylon that takes a little bit of heat to remove [Music] now you can use an oxy-acetylene torch if you want the job to go a little bit quicker but these propane torches are about 15 bucks what the flame does is heat up the yoke which in turn heats up the nylon or plastic that locks the u-joint caps in place forcing it to expand and forcing it out of the hall or chamber that is locked into now a little wd-40 will help lubricate the caps so they slide out of position a little easier there we go I guess is it's a little warm now you might have noticed I'm using a nut from one of the old rear axle u-bolts to drive on the bottom of the u-joint and help push the top cap out there we go just better than using a chrome socket that's kind of ridiculous just like a new one now with the old in with the new now you can see the location of the groove and the stock cap versus the replacement it's in a different spot and it's made to fit this replacement c-clip now to install the joint first carefully remove new joint caps on either side and slide one half at a time of the u-joint into the yoke then with the u-joint cross protruding from the yoke install one of the caps making sure the needle bearings are all still in the correct position then flip the joint over and slightly tap on the yoke to make sure that the cap starts eating in the yoke and once it's tapped in a little bit then you can flip it over and repeat the process again making sure that the needle bearings all stay in position if one falls out of position and ends up in the bottom of the cap where you're never going to get the clips to seat and the u-joints gonna fail prematurely if you do somehow manage to now there's grease pre-installed from the factory and that helps hold the needle bearings in place they're just always good to keep an eye on it I'm just using one of the old caps to help drive the new cap into position once I've got it seated then break out the noise maker and slowly vibrate it into place it might take a few seconds but better than whooping on it with a big hammer now once you get one you joint cap fully into position go ahead and install one of the c clips that way you can drive against that cap and the clip to make sure everything's installed correctly and all the way then flip it over press the other side cap all the way to position making sure that the groove for the c-clip is fully exposed install the c-clip and you're done [Music] you hey guys welcome back to the shop now our recently lowered Chevy it's back on all fours and looking pretty good now we can't do anything immediately about this old two-tone paint job but one thing we can do right now to improve the looks of this truck is swap out the rolling stock now take a look at what we're gonna replace those tired old wheels with these are from KMC we picked him up at Summit Racing it's a matte black finish they call it their addict wheel and it's a 20-inch diameter nine inches wide with a five and three-quarter inch back space this is a cast aluminum wheel that's gonna really bring the look of this truck into the 21st century and look a whole lot better we've got them wrapped in Falcon tires that are equally as cool check it out I wouldn't even say have a mind if its own so I'll show you this guy instead this is there is eNOS FK line in a 295 40 series 20-inch diameter wheel this is Falcon's answer to today's growing market a performance luxury crossovers and suv's full-size truck tires available in a wide variety of diameters from 17 to 20 inches including staggered now this tire features a performance-oriented asymmetric tread design for great traction and handling now falcon claims to have a silica enhanced formula in the rubber that improves the performance and eliminates some of the road noise we're gonna test him out on our truck see how they perform alright with our wheels installed well this truck is just a paint job away from looking like something we would actually want to drive but before we paint it we got to get rid of some more of this trim and do a little rust repair that's right so the next time you see this truck we'll take care of some of the tin worm issues that plagued this body style now just about every shop out there has one thing in common the need for some sort of shop towel or rag to clean up with and in most shops real estate is a premium so being able to hang your scott pro shop towels up on a pegboard not only gets them off the floor or off of a tabletop and makes grabbing a shop towel a one-handed deal and we've shown you and told you how tough these pro shop towels are and the new box is just a simple design that allows it to be installed on a pegboard for convenience so if you've got a pegboard will check out Scott Pro shop towels and their boxes made just for it if you guys are finally done with burning up spark plug boots on your engine you might want to check a set of these Excel Xtreme 9000 ceramic booted universal fit spark plug wires the wires themselves are a silicon spiral-wound ultra-high temperature eight millimeter wire and the kit comes with both traditional and HEI distributor boots but the real magic is in the ceramic boots which offer up to 600 degrees fahrenheit of heat resistance these axial ceramic booted plugs are perfect for a close proximity a high heat application such as a turbo supercharger or even a heavy-duty truck and are available wherever accel products are sold now if you've got an O 7 or newer Jeep JK Wrangler and you want to replace the kind of weak stock bumper with something a little bit more substantial or something styled more aggressively and check out the extreme stinger bumper from Paramount restyling this heavy duty steel bumper is precision cut and powder-coated black it's got an integrated winch mount heavy duty tabs and D rings that are included and it's designed to maximize clearance while offroad so if you want to toughen up the front end of your JK Wrangler with something that's functional and aggressive looking well check out the extreme stinger from paramount restyling guys thanks for watching truck tech scene a little bit

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 722,058

Keywords: chevy silverado, Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, chevy, street truck

Id: GKMrDnCcjA8

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 07 2019