Lift Q's

About a year ago I had my rear leaf packs rebuilt(added a leaf and rearched to 3.5") and they did some settling within about a month... After some good flexy wheelin recently combined my new (3 months old protofab) rear bumper with tire carrier and 32" spare hanging off the back it has settled just a bit more enough so that now I nair oncoming traffic with my headlights...

What I want to know without just buying new leaf packs(not in the budget) or messing around with different leafs from 20 vehicles to get the tail back up their is can how to get the heighth back...Can I add a longer shackle than I have now (its a mj shackle 3/4" longer than stock) or will this just kill the leaf pack faster...I dont mind adding a leaf to get the rear end up there if someone has a few ideas for me on what kind of vehicle(specifics required) it comes from...

Hasta

Put on the MJ shackles, but make sure to extend your bumpstops so you dont over compress the leaf springs.

MJs have larger bump stops if you can still get parts from them I just put 2" square steel tubing under mine and I'm adding MJ stops after I lift it to 5" next week.

You can get longer shackles than the MJ ones you are running now, but you won’t gain a whole lot. The shackles that I’ve seen come in 1” and 1 ½” lift versions. When I redid my spring packs I used a Rough Country short add-a-leaf and the main leaf out of my old factory springs (cut the eyes off of them). It handles the extra weight (full sized spare, gas can, heavy duty rear bumper, hi-lift jack, and ~100 lbs of gear) much better than the factory ones. If you want to build a new pack, leafs from XJs, 90’s S-10s, old body style Dakotas, and Rangers will work. Take a tape measure and go for a walk in your local junkyard. Basically, any spring that is 2 ½” wide will work, its just a matter of how long you want the leaves to be. Like other things in life, longer is better. You can add as many leaves as you like, but ten leaf packs are the biggest I’ve seen. Spring steel is tough to cut; you will need either a chop saw or a good angle grinder with a cut off wheel. I found it much easier to get the cuts straight with the chop saw. NAPA has the new center bolts for a couple of bucks apiece. Don’t try to use the center bolts to pull every thing up tight, they will snap. Ask me how I know. It works better if you loosely assemble the leaves with the center bolt just snug enough to hold every thing in place. Use c clamps to compress the leaves together and then tighten up the center bolts. I had to do that process a couple of times on each spring pack to get every thing good and tight. While you have the leaves apart it would be a good time to clean everything up and paint them with some graphite based paint and/or put the plastic liners between the leaves. BTW Your local spring shop will have the bend on style spring clips for a buck or two apiece, 2 per side (4 total) are sufficient. The whole thing is not that hard to do. Once I had all of the parts in hand it only took one day to uninstall the factory leaves, rebuild the spring packs and reinstall them back in my XJ. I gained several inches of lift and the ride is sooooo much better now. Its not Cadillac smooth, but tires don’t feel like they are going to go through my fender wells every time I hit a bump.

So I talked to the shop that did the work before and told him what happened he said bring em in well take care of them...for free added a new leaf that took care of the problem of the sagging but I figured it out it wasnt the bumper(though that didnt help) it was the 13 crates of milk I moved to my store from another one thats like 500lbs plus my spare tire carrier and bumper no wonder it sagged...
thanks for all responces if it happens again Im going shopping at the junkyards :lecture: consider me edumacated...
themud