Need some help on how to lower this thing.

[OldJimmy57]

I am almost desperate to get this thing to sit down lower. Can you guys give me any ideas? Also the suspension is from a 1998 Corvette C5. It is actually a complete 98 C5 corvette drivetrain that has been welded to the 55-59 chevy truck frame. Am now I am kind of in the dark on how to lower it. The corvette guys said to get longer bolts and drop it like that. And I did but that puts the end of the leaf springs almost touching the ground. And a coilover setup for the corvette is 2300.00 I was thinking body drop but then the torque tube would be in the cab and in the bed. Any of you guys have any ideas?

[dwcsr]

go to www.progressiveautomotive.com get the tel number and call them they will know how you can lower it. I think you can do it with a 7000 series shockwave from AirRide Technologies. You would remove the springs and use the shockwaves in place of them.

[Jebb1978]

Not sure but let me just say that that is a sweet start to a project!

[Frizzle Fry]

Well, I hate to say it, but that frame is just not right for C5 set-up. The C5 frame has some serious "kick-up" in the front and rear. Your frame is straight. Your frame sits very high in relation to the suspension.

The bottom line is that the vette was designed to have the torque tube run through the body in a large center tunnel. The tunnel is so big that the exhaust fits in there too. It is 12" high measured from the C5 floorboards. The way yours is set-up the truck's floorboards are going to be sitting on top of that. So in relation to the vette body, your truck has at least a 12" body lift.

If you want the thing to sit low, there's no way around running the torque tube through the cab and loosing some bed space. Look at Jay Leno's Toronado I couldn't find pics of the interior, but they ran a large tunnel in that thing.

You can drop the suspension using shockwaves in the stock shock location up front to eliminate the lateral leaf. In the rear I haven't found an airspring-over-shock (like shockwaves) that will fit in the stock shock location, but there are ways to mount it elsewhere.

One way is do use a push rod/rocker set-up like Porterbuilt did here:



Another option is to mount the shockwaves forward of the rear arms like this:


Those are some of your suspension options. I think you are going to have to make some serious changes to your chassis/body in order to get it low, regardless of what you do to the suspension. Look at the '61 in my sig link. My rockers actually sit lower than the vette's did without any suspension mods, and I still plan on running shockwaves.

I hope this is not discouraging for you to hear. Your truck has great potential if the right engineering is put into it. I'd be happy to provide you any other info, measurements, pics you might need.

[PBFAB.COM]

Frizzle Fry is right. There really is no easy way to achieve what you are looking for. The C5 suspension was designed to sit under a car that is much lighter than our trucks and a shorter wheel base (not too much shorter, but inches makes a world of differences when it comes to suspension design and function). I would recommend using either either shockwaves or coil-overs up front to eliminate that mono-leaf which has the incorrect spring rate for your application. The only way to get it to a lower ride height would be to cut it off and "z" it up (move it up and re-graft it onto the chassis). One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that the lower control arms should be parallel to the ground at ride height. It will be much easier to set this up with a shockwave, a coil-over will have lots of nasty math equations to go through in order to make sure it sits exactly where you want it.