He's running full size 1500 coils in the front. I doubt the front compresses more than a 3 or 4 inches. I had a buddy who did that with his S10 back around '95-'96 and it was horrible. He had a shop build upper and lower A arms for it along with a full engine cage but he threw in the 1500 coils to lift it. The front wouldn't travel more than a few inches and the first time we took it out to Barstow the drivers side shock mount broke off the engine cage and dented his hood.

If he had a normal ball joint I could make arms for him, but he has this strange ass one. Rather than being threaded it is smooth and has a dick head, and a bolt slips in the spindle that slides in the groove between the dick head and the shaft, holding it in place.

If the spindle accepted a normal thread ball joint we could just get some random bolt on ball joints from autozone and make some arms with tube and rod ends.

Did you look at the Explorer in the link? The Explorers have the same ball joint. I haven't looked at that yet on Eric's to figure out what I'm going to do because I'm still playing with angles on the upper and lower to make sure the stock mounting points will work.

Yeah he just used a rod end in the spindle instead, but rod ends are threaded. So I have no idea how he did that.

I'm still nervous about cutting these upper control arms. I wouldn't mind cutting the lowers at all, because there is so much surface area to extend and plate them, but the uppers... not so much.

I'm thinking about notching the frame and moving the upper mounts down, half way inside the frame. I could get some thick tube and weld it into the frame notches to patch it up.

Or maybe I should just cut the frame where it bows out around the coil, and weld a flat 3/16 plate right there instead. Just to give it clearance.

Does it actually hit or is it just really close? He could always put a limit strap on it to keep it from hitting if it is.

It hits. I can compress it enough with my hands to make it hit. I found some fagtech and camburg arms used. I'm just going to tell him to buy those.

What do you mean? When the suspension compresses the upper arm should move away from the frame. As the suspension extends it should move closer. If you put a jack under the crossmember and lift the front wheels off the ground does the upper arm and spindle touch the frame?

:judge: