The photo session with the truck was a success, but for copyright reasons I can't post any of the photos here. If you want to see a few previews, they are located at the Morgan Greene Photography facebook page. Here's a photo I took on the way to drop the truck off.
After getting the truck back, I wanted to start on everything I need to do to complete the final stage of lowering the truck. At this time I can't afford to dive right in and do everything I need to, so I'm taking it in stages for now. First off, I needed to replace the balljoints. I don't think GM ever intended for those things to come out! After fighting with them for quite a while, I finally got them out. The originals were SHOT, so I'm glad I tackled this finally.
Also, while at it I decided to try out the lower control arm caster mod. The details for the mod are found
here. Essentially, you move the lower arm forward which gives you more positive caster. Most seem to go with 3/4", but it requires a fair bit of clearancing. I ended up going with 1/2" which only took a slight amount of clearancing on the arm. This should result in roughly 4-5 degrees of positive caster. I still need to get the front end aligned but I can already feel an improvement. The steering is more confident and marginally tighter.
Since I had the whole front apart, I figured I would take the opportunity to mock up the final ride height and make sure everything would work where I wanted it. The stock front wheel tubs are absolutely not going to work, but there's no way I'm dropping $1k on aftermarket tubs, so I will probably eventually raise the stock tubs like a few others have done. Other than that, everything else works just how I planned and I love the look! I can't wait to finally be able to drive it like this.
One nuance of lowering the truck this much is the rear wheels move forward. At 8.5" of drop, it is noticeable and looks awkward to me, so I'm thinking of how I want to remedy this. I will probably add a 1" spacer behind the trailing arm mounts, which is what others have done. The only thing I need to figure out then is what to do with the driveshaft. I don't feel comfortable with just pulling it out of the trans another inch, plus that would bind up the carrier bearing too I would think. I will probably have the rear section lengthened by 1". We'll see.
Oh, and you probably noticed by now that my wheels are white again. I liked the silver, but the white looked better to me for some reason. Maybe because it's how the truck looked when I got it. Anyway, I really didn't intend to switch them back yet but I was trying to clean something off the silver and the silver wiped right off (with carb cleaner) and the white was left mostly unharmed. I took the truck out to take a few photos and put some miles on the new front end work.
Lastly, it was time to get a Christmas tree so we brought the truck down the road to a local tree stand we get our tree from every year. They get their trees from right down the road a way in the Appalachian mountains.
That's it for now.