Well my the rest of my rancho showed up Monday, box 4 of 4 containing the subframe, became damaged in shipping. Half the paint was scratched off the front and i was missing a hardware pack in the other box. Well Rancho wont just send me a new subframe and a new hardware pack, so they are 2 daying me a new setup Anyway is there any funky tools i need or any tips that would help me out along the way? I plan on taking the shocks in to be switched over, other than that is there anythings thats a biotch? Its seems pretty straight forward, i aint no ASE tech, but aint no stranger in the shop either. the only thing i really dont understand is in the whole knuckle swap. whats the deal with the vacuum cap on the integrated wheel end? is there a boot on it or something? i slide the wheel end onto the shaft and then install the knuck and then slip that ahead and bolt it up to the knuckle? is that right? it doesnt really specify how it works, but somewhere i read it was a tiger to get it to line up? Any input or foresight would be good. i'd hate to ruin a truck with 9200 miles on

 

Make sure you have a 30 mm socket for the nut on the lower front shock mounts. Need a 12-point 12 mm for the driveshaft and halfshaft bolts. Air tools help.. my halfshaft bolts were on really tight!! Don't get stressed over the integrated wheel end, its pretty easy. You'll have the knuckle off and there will be 3 small bolts holding the integrated wheel end on. When you take it off you will see what the mean by compressing it. Put it on a bench, press it flat, and put a vacuum cap on it so it stays in the compressed state. When you are putting it back on, you put it on the axle first. Take your time and good luck!

 

big boy sockets, big boy wrenchs or at least 2 very large crescents, but you will need big sockets, forget doing the coils its like 40 bucks to get them put on, dont forget to draw an index line all the way down and be **** to the tech putting the new shocks, so its indexed right, vaccum cap makes it way easier, but you can kinda hand jam/ fudge it back in. for the drive shaft and axle shafts, a "fan" wrench would probably be useful, i just jammed another wrench on another bolt to stop it from turning while tightening or loosening... die grinder or dremel (which will work but will take TIME) to cut the frame.. good time to do brakes.

also maybe i was using wrong sizes, but it seemed like most if not all oem parts used metric sizes, i would think they would be standard.

 

those front ladder bars/impact struts were a bitch to thread the nut on the bolt from the inside. If you run into any problems post your question in this forum and we'll help you through it.

 

The majority of cars generally use metric sizes. Rarely do you have standard

 

You need both metric and standard wrenches, all of the bolts on the truck were metric, and it seems like most of the bolts with the lift were standard,
Make sure when you have to cut the frame you cut enough, I had to drop the sub-frame down and cut off more. All in all it was fairly straight forward. I worked alone most of the time and did it in about 20 hours. But I also painted my wheels, did the front brakes and installed a light bar.
My truck has 90K miles on it so some of the bolts were a bitch to get off.
Good luck, it is kind of scary when your truck is in 500 paices laying on the floor.

 

what size vacuum caps?