erin-the-vulgarian

Hi all! A few weeks ago I picked up a wonderful '91 extended cab 2WD V6 pickup. I bought this to be a general purpose hauler for when I don't have room to stuff something into my car, and I have no desire to turn it into an offroader. I do, however, want to lift it just a smidge so that I can fit bigger tires and better navigate the poorly maintained gravel roads that are all around where I live. I know, I know, "get a 4WD," but this is what I have and I don't need it to rock crawl. I've spent the last week or so doing research on what a couple inches of lift would take, and the sheer variety of options has left me overwhelmed. And yes, I checked the sticky on 2WD lift options, but it still left me wondering what paired with what and unfortunately many of the links there are no longer any good.

For some background, I'm mostly familiar with unibody Subarus so lift spacers make perfect sense to me. As far as I can tell, I can put some ball joint spacers in the front with a sway-away torsion and call it a day there, maybe with longer shocks for a better ride (Please someone tell me if I'm wrong on this). For the rear though, that's where I get confused. I have a spring-under-axle setup so I don't think that spacer blocks will work for me here (right?). I've seen people mention longer shackles for lifts but from what I've read it's hard to judge how much a given shackle will actually lift the truck up. I've also found plenty of options for lift springs, but on most sites it's hard to tell what will fit right in versus what will require moving mounting hardware around. Anything that requires welding is outside of what I can do myself, and I'd like to do as much myself as possible. The leaf springs on the truck right now are functional but sagging a bit so I'll probably replace them eventually, if not with lift springs then with OEM springs and something else to pick the rear end up. Can someone help point me in the right direction? And assuming I shoot for a 2-3" lift in the suspension, what shocks would work best for that?

Thanks in advance!

SomedayJ

4Crawler (Roger Brown) is a forum member who sell body lifts, ball joint spacers, etc, and explain some interesting stuff about the subject in his webpage:

https://www.4crawler.com