My brother is wanting some lower his 79 f100 a little. Somebody told us we could heat the coil springs and let me settle on the front. On the rear do we need shackles or put the rearend on top of the leaf springs and put some blocks in it? I need somebody to shed some light on this, i dont know anythang about lowerin a truck , all i got is a bunch of 4wds

Thanks for the help....

btw its sittin alot higher in the back right now.

 

I don't think heating springs is the best way to lower the front. You could cut coils out of the springs, though. That's what I did on my Maverick and it worked fine. Fot the rear the only thing I can think of is to do a spring-over like you mentioned. Then if it is not low enough you could put in some lowering bolcks.

 

ok thats what we will do , i will get him to buy another set of coils to cut down........and we are gonna gear it , so we can do the spring-over when we do that.

 

I don't want to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong.
But...

Cutting springs is very dangerous. From what I understand, coil springs were designed with a specific spring rate in mind. The tension that the coil is at, is the correct tension to told the truck correctly. When you cut a spring, there is no way to,

A.) Cut both of the springs at the same rate; hence one side of the truck is going to be supported by a difference amount of spring rate (resistance) than the other. On the small scale, the truck may settle lop-sided. On the large side, it can create a pull of the steering to one side or the other.

B.) Be sure that you are keeping enough resistance to support your truck while driving. The worst possible thing that could happen is that the suspension could give out while driving, and you end up laying frame on accident.

I know that it seems cheap, but the risks really aren't worth it. I hope that you are able to find a suspension kit that has been designed to give you the drop that your looking for while keeping your safety in mind.

Good luck with the project,
Be safe, have fun!

And don't forget we always love pictures!
Keep us updated!

 

we are just gonna flip the rearend for now and see how it looks....... its at tha body shop gettin completly sand blasted inside and out rite now , then gonna paint it Charcoal gray and put black interior in it......

 

79s have I-Beams? or dual wishbone or whatever they call it?

cutting a coil or so out wont really hurt it, it will give the spring a stiffer spring rate tho.
just DONT heat them, even when youre cutting them make sure they stay cool

 

Sounds cool, keep us updated!
Any pictures so far?

 

yep they do....

and naw we didnt even take a pic of it before we started tearin it apart.... but its a 79 f100 swb , with a 300-6 bored .040 over...... 3 spd trans..... i will try to get a few pics of it as it is now.......i need to just start a build thread

 

sounds like a cool build. you might try and just pull a leaf or two in the back i did thes on my old truck and if was fine. Depends on how low your going the best way is a flip kit for the back and drop I-beams on the front.

 

We are thankin once we lower the rear it will be sittin pretty low because the back is probaly 3" higher than the front...... we dont want it to to low , we just want a hot roddy stance i guess you could say lol