Carloxaugustine

Hello everyone! This is my second post on the tech forums. I’m looking for some advice as I have a bit of a unique scenario.

I recently acquired a FWC slide-in to live out of while I’m in college. It was taken off an 80s bronco and modified to fit our trucks even with the tailgate shut.

Before I went to pick it up I already knew I’d have to make some suspension upgrades to handle the weight as I’m already playing with fire with approx. 600-800lb of constant load. so before I got the camper I upgraded to some bilstein 5100 rear shocks and set of 1500lb hellwig helper springs as a bandaid until this summer when I have more funding and time. For now it works, but not without some slight bend in the front of my leaf springs. Within the next couple months I’m hoping to gather parts.

My truck currently has ~4inches of lift (on a block with stock springs) I’m hoping to keep the height and add a bit of rake in the rear. I’m currently looking at the possibility of rear OME heavy duty springs in combo with a 1.5in lift block to set my rear ride height to about 4inches, all wrapped up with along with a driveline spacer or more favorably an extended driveshaft.

my truck is a 4x4 22RTE single cab the height of the camper pushes my final truck height to almost exactly 7 feet tall



Does anyone have any advice (that’s not get a bigger truck) as to what I should be looking for to put in my rear suspension? Is my write up flawed? Should I just go for a dually axle/full floater? anything I should look out for or that I’m not considering?

any help would be appreciated

Thanks Again.

Carlo

mechkw

A little more detail on which truck you have and whether or not it is 4x4. Which or who's helper spring you went with. Height of camper? Pics go a long ways

Carloxaugustine

edited, thanks for the reply!

mechkw

With what I see....my go to first would be a shop that builds leaf springs. When they look at it they can give a recommendation. What I did on my 86 X-cab truck was replace the spring pack with a pack off of a 4 runner. But before installing them I took the stock springs apart and cut them down and filtered 2 additional leafs into the 4 runner pack. I ended up with 5 leafs plus the overload

mechkw

So remember this also---shocks are not meant to support vehicle weight or loads. Their mounting points are not designed for that. Just designed to slow compression and rebound. Where are you located??

rattlewagon

Old Man Emu makes a great spring for these trucks that designed to hold a large load. https://allprooffroad.com/arb-cs010r...ft-cs010r.html

Or look into chevy 63" spring swap, which could allow you to run a 3/4 ton or larger spring if you wanted.

Or look into air bags to help lift. Bonus with the airbags, if you leave the lines separate you could use them to help level the truck when camping. I have a set of firestone airbags on my Tundra and love them.

What do you have for tires? A set of LT tires instead of Passenger tires may help too when moving.

Carloxaugustine

​​​​​​​Right haha, i guess that part was kinda redundant i just replaced them cause my rear shocks were gone. I'm in San Diego

mechkw

Nice, this makes it easy.........contact these guys.... right up the 15 from youWebsite: northcountyspring.com

Phone: (760) 546-6551

Carloxaugustine

awesome, I’ll give them a call.

thanks man

coryc85

And please post more pics of that camper, very cool.