powerstroke73, have you used their product before? i am just courious becuase you really dont like them at all, i just wanted to know the reason why, so i could learn from other peoples mistakes, because i need this straight axle conversion and i wanted your input on why they make a bad product, any substantiated evidence? thanks for any info you can give

 

you still around powerstroke73?

 

Yep, I'm around, I just don't read this forum much anymore. No I have not used Fabritech, but there is a reason I haven't. Back when I had my F150 I looked into doing a SAS on it and at the time Fabritech had just come out with their first kits. The first thing I thought when I looked on their site was the amount they wanted for the kits. When I read into it and saw what they included it was not a complete kit. As I recall they wanted $2000 or something for the 8" coil kit. That didn't include driveshafts or the axle itself. It was basically some brackets and coils. Brake lines and I believe steering weren't included either. Of course they sold those things, but when I priced out a plain jane D44 front axle, driveshafts, steering, brakes, and the kit (complete system) it was in excess of $5000. That a 3.54 geared open D44 no less. The last time I looked they wanted I think $2000 for that same axle. 6 months ago I bought and built that exact axle for less than $300. At the time I didn't know how durable their kits actually were since nobody I knew had really run them yet. Now go forward to a couple years ago. A couple guys on FTW started running their kits. One of them was mud and he ran their leaf sprung D44HD kit. During his buildup I talked with him alot about the quality of the kit and how it performed. Alot of the bracketry he showed me wasn't braced right and alot of the pieces he had to modify to make them either work correctly with the kit or they broke. Specifically he had alot of problems with getting the shocks located correctly and some of the shackles were giving him problems. I haven't talked to him in a long time so I don't know if he ever got the thing working correctly or not, but last I did talk to him he was having problems. Also when he ordered he was given a delivery date, which they promptly missed by a few months. To top it off the kit was incomplete and he had to fight to get the parts to show up. After it was all together his front flex was pitiful at best for what the truck SHOULD have been able to do. The most recent person is also on FTW and he had similar issues with missing pieces and long waits for said parts. He did complain that afterwards the ride was very very rough. It wasn't very long after it was done (less than 6mo) that he traded the truck. Overall I haven't really heard of anyone that was truly happy with the kit during installation and the peformance of it after it was said and done. After seeing Mud's kit and what he had to do to make it fit I could never justify spending that much money on a kit like that. Now if the kits were more reasonably priced I could maybe justify it, heck even at the current price if they were complete and had well built parts I could even see it. But as it is I could never justify it. If you want some pictures you can look under Muds or SolidAxleF150's gallery at FTW if they still have any pictures up of this. Mud did have a few, but most showing the faulty parts I had on my old computer which got lost in the transfer. I also don't necessarily hate them, but whenever I see a post about someone wanting to do a SAS the first thing someone says is get Fabritech, they have a kit and show a picture of a big truck and everyone drools. I usually try and point out what I've seen on the kits and the reports I've gotten on the kit from my research so I can maybe help someone from making an expensive mistake.

 

thanks good info