Front springs, and drop hanger???

[My85'Runner]

Okay I've just about exhausted myself thinking about lift options.
The thing I'm confused about is this, I want my front axel to move forward to get my 35's away from the rubber eating fenders and firewall. Would I be able to take a stock pack of toy rears and just drop them in up-front w/o building some kind of hybrid pack and still get 3" of lift? I don't have the time and patience to deal with making a new pack and doing all the sanding and painting required for these Southern road salt beat springs. Let alone I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to building a pack. To move the axel forward 1.5"- 2" do you HAVE to drop your front hanger? It seems that this is what everyone is saying(or at least PBB, Toy FAQ), and All Pro's site.

I just want my axel to move and this lift thing to go smooth w/o much downtime, I work and go to school(both full time) so a day, possibly two is tops down time for me.:cuss: (not enough hours in one day).

Thanks in advnace.

[suv]

Rear springs up front will be too soft unless you add some leaves. I've never done it, but there's a lot of info on which leaves you can add (toy fronts, or whatever else).

You don't need a drop hanger. The advantage is that by moving the front of the spring down, your pinion angle/caster is improved with use of longer shackles. If you have longer shackles and don't use a drop hanger, you may need some shims to bring the alignment back.

I think the rear springs will move your axle 2.5" forward, which is about as far as you can go with a regular high-steer setup. If you choose to redrill your spring perches (for an additional 1.5" forward), you will need to either: Cut out the body mount and move your steering box further forward, or use standard crossover steering which puts the tie rod below the springs.

Hope this helps.

Cody

[KToy]

dont understand all of what hes saying.
but i have stockies up front of mine and i get great flex but they sag a bit, let me tell u how i did it so u know.


mysetup:
dana 44 front with 2 packs of stock springs. this means i had 4 springs total and i cut the eye holes off of one set and set them under another set to make a total of 2 spring packs per side. this helps the sag and it flexes extremely well(i got pics to prove). with the steering an can barely run crossover NOT HIGH STEER yet. my leafs are so flat that they tie rod hits the leaf as of yet. to correct this im looking for some skyjacker rears with like a 1.5 lift so that the leaf has structure to it and skyjacker leafs are warrantied and they are very soft and support well to. when i put these up front i used 91 rear stocks and 85 stock are the ones i cut off. the problem with this is teh 91 rears are 54 inches eye to eye and the 85 is a shorter srping. the 91 eye holes are offset like 3-4 inches and i run 37 tires and dont hit my cab, in fact my front tire almost lines up with my bumper. about the drop hanger i dont know if u need one or not depending on the truck u got, i had to use one with the 91 sas and the dana 44 front. as far as attaching the rear of the spring i made a plate and mounted a wide plate the the frame right under the cab mount and then mounted a spring hanger there with some 8 inch shackles,(u can use whatever length u need here). my fornt drop hanger. crossmember is similer to allpros hanger they sell in there front end kit but mine is 2.5x2.5 instead of 2x2 and we made it didnt buy it.

if u want pics let me know pm me ur email and ill shoot ya some pics. or u can check my pics in this section about 20 days back look for my name as the thread starter under

constrictor pics and 91 ext cab pics

[TOYOTAFREAK]

Front Drop hangers are not hard to make and are a great way to lift. I built this one for about $35 cdn worth of steel and had it all fabbed in about 3 hours.

Make sure you make longer shackles to accomodate the drop hanger so you're not throwing your front axle off camber.

[TOYOTAFREAK]

here is a shot of it tacked on to the front of my truck. By the way i forgot to mention it is a 3" hanger.

[KToy]

ya almost identical to my truck man

what size shackles u running to level out ur pinion angle ?

[robrocketanski]

that is a very nice looking hanger! i need to redo mine since i miscalculated and had about 7 degrees positive caster. i need to drop about 4-5 inches. that is w/ a 4" shackle but mounted to the bottom of the frame to make use of my stock rears in front.

[Ray McPeek]

I have also been thinking about doing different springs up front. I have an 84 and I think the eye to eye length of the front spring was in the ball park of 46". If you were to use a 54" spring up front wouldn't you have to move your front spring mount not only down but also forward to compensate for half of the overall length increase, also taking into consideration any forward shifting of the axle you might want to do? (just like you do in the rear with 56" or 63" conversions) And with this has anybody heard of somebody trying and extended front mount and trying to get a 63" up front?

[KToy]

first of all u cannot use a 63 inch up front. reason for this is ur axle would be under ur cab if u did that, unless u redrilled the holes and moved ur hanger about 10 inches in front of ur bumper. mine are mounted under my frame as well and there 54 inches long cuz there out of a 91 yota. this moved my axle forward AT least 4 inches nvr measured it though cuz i had ifs originaly but its up there

[fourwd1]

Originally posted by My85'Runner
Okay I've just about exhausted myself thinking about lift options.
The thing I'm confused about is this, I want my front axel to move forward to get my 35's away from the rubber eating fenders and firewall. Would I be able to take a stock pack of toy rears and just drop them in up-front w/o building some kind of hybrid pack and still get 3" of lift?

No you can't.
1) without adding other leaves they will be much too soft to be useful.
2) you won't get anywhere near 3" of lift (they'll be practically flat).

To move the axel forward 1.5"- 2" do you HAVE to drop your front hanger? It seems that this is what everyone is saying(or at least PBB, Toy FAQ), and All Pro's site.

No you don't. The drop hanger is employed to get LIFT from the rears up front. (see 2) above).

[My85'Runner]

Well despite my attempts to be a penny pincher, I have figured on going with All Pro Long Travel 3" lift springs. It just makes my life easier, the idea of junk yard searching here in the South, then finding good arch springs, and doing all the needed sanding and painting to get good looking/performing springs was just too much. Every 63" set I found here had really good arch, but they were just nasty and needed thw work of a weekend with a grinder and some rattle cans. I've done enough of that witht he frame and axels already.

So no need for a hanger drop is the group consensus(sp). :Thumbsup: I will prolly run Sky's boomerang shackles for the front, they net about 1" of lift. Are there any shackles out there for the rear that give aprox 1" of lift?

Thanks for all the input.:yes:

[fourwd1]

Sky, All Pro, AOR, etc should all have shackles for you.

[Kyron]

Originally posted by My85'Runner
So no need for a hanger drop is the group consensus

NO... you use a drop hanger to keep a better pinion angle when you use longer front shackles .......

Also a drop hanger will be stronger than the stock........


Do the drop. :yes:

[WHITE TRASH]

You can get away with not using a drophanger if you use springs out of a 2 wheel drive as a base. I put a set of 81 2 wheel springs in the front of my 81 awhile back, I got about 2 1/2 inches of lift out of them. I pulled the overload, added 1 long reasonably firm spring to each pack. The driverside got a leaf with a bit more arch on acount of the perch height difference. I finished it off with a shortened draglink and shackles drilled 5" center to center. Its really easy to do the swap just helps to do the needed reasearch first. :)
WT