Hello All

I am a long time F150 owner and long time reader of this site. I finally decided to join since I am in the process of building my 2005 screw 4x4. I have totally redone my interior, new carpet, new leather, new suede headliner and even changed the interior color to black. I am now moving to the exterior and have added a ram air hood, wheels tires and am now going for a lift, paint, fender flares etc.

Anyway...In the next two weeks I plan on installing a 6 inch suspension lift and am really leaning on the less expensive lifts such as Rough Country, Trailmaster, Zone Offroad and I may consider Pro Comps $1700 lift. The reason I am not willing to spend more on my lift and get a BDS or Fabtech is because the most action this truck will get is me driving it down some dirt roads on my land and maybe a few drives through a pasture or two but I will not be doing any mudding , hill climbing, rock crawling etc therefore I am not looking for a top quality kit, it is strictly the look I am going for here.

I am currently running Rancho quicklift coilover shocks and I love them and want to keep them. They gave me a little bump in height on the front end, unfortunately I did not measure the height before and after the the quicklifts so I do not know how much height was gained but I am guessing a little under 2 inches, maybe 1.75 or so. It definitely did not level me out. The Rancho quicklifts give you height because the shocks are about 2 inches taller than the stock shocks but the coils that come with them must have settled enough that I didnt get the full 2 inch lift.

I need to find a 6 inch lift kit that will allow me to use my ranchos. I threw out my stock set of shocks so that is not an option and even if it was I really want to use my ranchos with my new lift.

My questions are

1. What is the best lift for me to reuse my Ranch quicklift shocks?

2.What is the best lift as far as ease of installation?

My angles look pretty good with the ranchos, not much different than stock so in my thinking the new lift should keep me the same as stock as far as my front end angles and keeping the ranchos would keep me at the angles I am currently seeing now. Is that correct?? and will all the lifts out there keep me at stock angles if I was using all the parts that come with the kit?

One lift that I do not want to go with the Zone Offroad lift because I will be installing this myself and Zone requires you to have a 10 ton press because you have to reuse your bearings from your stock knuckles. So I have already scratched that option off.

I believe with the procomp there is no cutting involved. Is that true?

I hope you guys can help me with this!! I have been searching high and low through Forums and google but I cannot find the answer to the rancho question. I have seen a bunch of threads on whether you can stack spacers etc but this is def not the same thing as stacking.

I will be posting progress pics and showing before and after pics soon, this truck is going to look awesome when I am done.

Thank you guys!!! Sorry for the long winded post!!

 

Any lift that comes with the 6" spacer will allow you to keep using your rancho's at the leveled or stock height. Most of them are referred to as the Stage 1 lifts, what you don't want is a kit that comes with the 6" coilovers, but I doubt your looking at those anyways since those kits can get pretty pricey.

Another thing to look for is to make sure the kit you go with provides a full 6" dropdown, some only provide around 5", which means you would have to lower the ranchos down to keep the angles in check. This is of course if you want to keep the rancho's at the level height to get around 7.5-8" of lift overall. But if your going to set them back down to stock height, then it the dropdown height isn't as important.

And the quicklifts give you height because they change the preload on the spring, that's how they're adjustable. The reason they don't give the full advertised amount is not only because the truck settles slightly, but also because they use a lower spring rate than factory, so weight on the front end effects it more.

Another thing to watch out for is depending on what the specs of the wheels you got are, they may or may not work with a lift kit. Need to make sure the backspacing on them works with what the kit requires.

 

Rough Country is only a 5" drop down, so you'd have really bad angles with the QLs, so that's out. You don't want the Zone, and I know nothing about the Trailmaster.

Another member called Rancho and they apparently told him the QLs can't be used with a lift. Why I don't know, but they said you'd lose lift and shouldn't be used. I'd have to think it's because of extra weight somehow pressing down on them with the lift, and they respond very badly to extra weight/pressure. KingRanch4Life is the guy's username if you want to message him about what Rancho told him.

The Rancho QLs aren't height adjustable either, only the Bilsteins are. I thought they were adjustable though for the longest time.

You could just get the Zone and take the knuckles to a shop mid-install to have them done. I've never heard that about the Zone though.

 

I can personally attest to the Quicklifts NOT liking added weight on the front end. They use too soft of a spring and they tend to sag, a LOT when you have added weight like a winch, HD bumper etc... on the front end.

IF you want to keep your QLs I would swap in a heavier duty spring such as the Moog 81120. I haven't done it yet to mine, but am close to pulling the trigger on that to get my full height with my winch. THEN say for example you get a 4" lift, use a 1.75" leveling spacer to get the shock to the right height. (The QL should give you ~ 2.25" lift, you could go with a full 2" spacer to make sure though...) If you go with a 6" lift, a 4" spacer would be needed. Do NOT stack spacers!

 

Huh, learn something new everyday.

I can definitely see the quick lifts not liking the added weight from the lift kit though.

 

^yeah, DB is the one that corrected me on that haha. And I looked it up again just to make sure before saying that.