I did a spacer lift on my buddies RAM 1500 with IFS. Rear was simple, solid axle just put the spacer in between the spring and the frame. For his front we replaced the shock. The height was set with a little circlip,
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same spring was reused and strut went back in without any problems. His did not have the sway bar link attached to it though. The install of the front wasn’t so bad except that we were using autozone spring compressors and had to cut of the little nut on top the shock to take the whole assembly apart. Took like an hour to cut of each nut.
I feel your pain, things aren’t always working the way we would like them to. I respect the fact you can admit the defeat.
Well fuck, since you started this thread, please allow me to vent some of my frustration in here.
Long story short I got all 5 AEV wheels replaced under warranty free of charge, and was offered to pick form any wheels I wanted. I decided to go with their new beadlocks. Got the wheels, they came with galvanized metric bolts. I really wanted to have black bolts on my beadlock rings. Spent few days looking for bolts in phosphate finish. It’s really fucking hard to find metric bolts. I wanted to go with 12points or button heads, couldn’t find shit in the grade I needed. Spent few more days researching grading and blot class. Eventually I settled on same type of bolt (flange bolt) within the same class 10.9. Ordered the bolts, after they came in, the threads weren’t quite as long as I needed them to be.
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I decided to extend the threads with my little tapping jig

. Spent couple hours doing so and did about 50 out of 120
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This past Saturday I tried mounting my spare tire. About 8 to 10 bolt holes started stripping before I even got close to closing the gap between the ring and the wheel. Some bolts literally fucking poped out, pulling the threads out with them.
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I abandoned the project, fought to pull the fucking rim back out of the tire. I did more research on bolts and extending the threads and shit. I found that I am using full body bolts. When those are extruded, a little angle at the end of the threads if left of.
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If you try to extend the threads over that angle you end up with two or three incomplete threads.
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Not sure if this I what caused the bolts hole to strip because they were stripping way before that area of the bolt was threaded in.
I am getting another wheel sent over from AEV. But what do I do now? Did I make a mistake or was is just defective wheel? Are those wheels just shit and the next one will strip them same way? Do I swallow my pride and just use their bolts, are they special in some way? But I don’t want the galvanized bolts, I want the fucking black phosphate bolts. Do I just sell those wheels and go with something else? I like those fucking wheels though. I can’t find the correct length bolts. Custom made bolts can only be made with a minimum of 2500 pieces, which is a little more than I need.
I am so fucking frustrated. I have done enough research on bolt class and manufacturing processes that I’ll be a writing fucking a book on bolts soon. I am absolutely dumbfounded. Fuck me, I just spent 30 minutes writing this post..... not sure If I feel any better about myself right now.
cheers mate, [emoji482]