Yep trashed a tire. The same tire I had fixed twice in the previous week, nails both times, oh the joys of living in the country. It turns out there must have been another nail or one that worked it self out on the trip because I got almost to Long Beach from Paso Robles before someone flaged me saying I had a low tire. It was raining and slow and go fri. night traffic so I did'nt notice until the damage was done. I limped air pump to air pump to Long Beach. In the morning I was having trouble finding a proper tire. So I called the calvary, how cool is it that when the calvary shows up it's Ross in his beautiful black SSR ( gotta love the chrome wheels with the red calipers ) with Arts rear wheel. I throw it on and we caravan over to Arts, me feeling like the redheaded stepchild with my filthy redline. It had been raining and snowing at my place for two weeks, it was so muddy coming out on Fri. morning I spent most of the time on Big Sandy Rd. (call it big muddy this time of year) going sideways, our big fat tires in mud might as well be skis. I had spent a fist full of quarters at the self wash but mostly on the underside. Well I got to Arts and his lovely wife had made some great food, I can't belive she let the boys play in the garage when her kitchen is still torn up!
As for the install the back was a breeze it only took about half an hour. The front took abut an hour and a half with the most time spent geting to the top shock mounts on the left, having Art there reduced the pucker factor and the S---,P---,F--- factor to zero. I could not have done it nor would I have even tried it without Arts expertise and cool spring compressor. To say nothing of his cool garage. Thanks again to Art and the others that helped.
First impressions after the installation are..
I was surprised that the ride was pretty much the same, if anything softer. That being said, the first part of the bounce was softer, maybe, but it felt as if the more the spring was compressed the stiffer it got. This seemed more evident at speed. As for the antisway bars it was hard to tell on the flat straight roads on the way home. When I reached the eighteen miles of curving country roads to my house it was already dark, and the possibilty of hitting something like a deer or elk or even a wild pig is too great to speed through the turns at night. As it is, it is almost impossible to get to my house without hiting a rabbit or squrril or some other small rodent. So more testing in the daylight later this week.
Oh one more thing, the feel of the lowering ( from inside the truck ) is much greater than the actual lowering looks from the outside. I'm glad for many reasons I did'nt go any lower. It gives it a very low slung feel, those of you that want to get away from the low slung vette feel may not want to do this. All and all though I like the feel and can't wait to push through the curves and test it out some more.
