P1000 P1K5Dave's TTC 3" Lift and Fox Shock Install

[ToddACimer]

I went with the two-bolt upper a-arm option from TTC. Welded in two tabs to each side. Big strength added to the upper a-arm mount.

View attachment 280777

Does that reinforcement add anything to the front tab and rear tab or is it just 2 tabs in the middle? I've broken 3 upper control arm bolts and damaged 2 more so I'm interested in a similar change.

 

[Admin]

 

[P1K5Dave]

Just adds two tabs. They're pretty stout.

 

[P1K5Dave]

Oh, and it runs two 12mm bolts (like your lowers) instead of the 10mm long bolt that's stock. You have to drill out your existing tabs first.

 

[DDDonkey]

Just adds two tabs. They're pretty stout.

I almost went that route, and looking back I should have. Post some more pictures when you done installing it.

 

[chucksmith0706]

Any updated pics?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[P1K5Dave]

I'll get some pics up after this weekends riding. And there's quite a bit to write up. Being lazy...

 

[P1K5Dave]

OK, time to get caught up on this stuff. Let's start with some before and after photos:

Before:

And after:

 

[P1K5Dave]

Before:

After:

 

[P1K5Dave]

The tire clearance is fantastic:

Front tire before:

And After:

 

[P1K5Dave]

Rear tire. I never liked the rear end of my Pioneer, aesthetically speaking. The 30s were too narrow, and looked like they were rear-ended and jammed forward. I put 2" spacers on them, that helped with width (Spacers were on in the before pic here)

Before:

Now there's a good bit more clearance between the back tire and the body. It just looks like it belongs there.

After:

 

[P1K5Dave]

Some height numbers:

Vehicle Height	Before	After
Bottom of front bumper	13 3/4"	18"
Bolt below front doors	17 1/2"	20 3/4"
Bottom of rear hitch	16 1/2"	19"
Bottom of Honda "N" on tailgate	43 3/4"	45 7/8"
Front tire / bumper clearance	Before	After
Tires straight	4 3/4 "	5 1/2"
Tires at full turn	2"	4 1/4"

 

[P1K5Dave]

So, as you can see, I got a lot more lift in the front at this point than I did in the rear. I attribute some of this to the preload settings on the 814 shocks, something I still need to tweak a little.

But overall, the Pioneer is sitting nearly perfectly level at this height, so before there was a rake angle going on from back to front.

Strangely enough, you're supposed to set your shocks to 18.5" length bolt-to-bolt, and then after riding you should see them settle in to 18". After plenty of miles, then setting my compression knobs to the #5 setting, my shocks are closer to 18 3/4" bolt-to-bolt. Did the compression setting add back everything that should have been lost to break-in sag? I don't know, but I think I'll back off the preload a bit.

 

[P1K5Dave]

While it's not really easy to get a feel for how much bigger she is from the pics, as you can see in the dimensions I'm stepping up 3" higher to get into the door now, and my front bumper is over 4" up from where it was. I'll probably bring that number down as much as an inch when I re-do the preloading.

 

[P1K5Dave]

I was very happy to gain the ability to dial in my cambers with the Texas Tough Customs arms. My front had a lot of negative camber (top leans in) and my rears had a ton of positive (top leans out) camber. I didn't get those "before" numbers with the old lift, but the pics show it pretty clearly. Look back at the "front clearing a bucket" pics and you can see the front before and after.

The rear was even worse, but I can't find a decent before pic of my rear camber. You can see that they're looking good now in the rear pics above.

All four tires are at about 0.5 degree negative camber now. Interestingly, when I put it together the TTC front arms were preset just right, and my camber landed right where I wanted it. The TTC rear arms, however, started out with horrible positive camber, in the area of 3 degrees. I had to bring the heim joints on the rear arms in somewhere around 4-4.5 turns to get them right.

 

[P1K5Dave]

Starting with the Texas Tough Customs 3" lift kit, some installation lessons learned:

First off, Jared is top-notch in customer service. I called him several times with questions and thoughts, and he always answered right away, was really helpful, and actually encouraged me to call him again with anything I need. Seriously, amazing customer service. I don't know how the guy finds the time.

The shock mounting tabs are spaced 1.5" apart, whereas I think stock is closer to 1.4" (remember, the only stock arms I had were the rear uppers.) Something to note when you're planning your installation, you may need some spacing washers.

The ball joints are actually tie rod ends for a 1-ton truck. He gives you all the part numbers you need to buy replacement joints, available at your local auto parts store.
Upper Ball Joints - Moog ES2848LT
Lower Ball Joints - Moog ES437L
Inner Tie Rod Ends - SATV T4571
Outer Tie Rod Ends - Moog ES80558

Most of them are in the $25-$30 range if you buy them online. Beware, though, they're not really common ones. I checked 3 parts stores in my area, and only AutoZone had one upper ball joint in stock. Everything else had to be ordered by everyone.

The great thing about these upper and lower ball joints is that they thread into the a-arms via the mounting stud, there is no pressing-in of ball joints on the TTC arms. That will make life a lot easier on swapping them out, especially on the trail. You just need something to help with extracting the tapered stud, but you have that with any a-arm. During pre-assembly, I had to pop them in and out a few times and was able to do so just by lifting up and tapping the hub near the stud with a hammer. I'm not sure how well that'll work after they set in for a long time, so I bought one of these:

Yeah, it's probably going to jack up your boot trying to get it off, but if it's old and being replaced, who cares... Otherwise, if I need to take them out for any other reason, I'll try the hammer-tap method.

 

[P1K5Dave]

More on TTC install:

As mentioned earlier, I opted for the 2-bolt upper a-arm design. This adds some work to your installation, as you need to:

1) Drill out the holes in your existing frame tabs to 1/2"
2) Mock up assembly of the new arms and the two new tabs
3) Tack weld the tabs into place
4) Drop the a-arm back out of the tabs so you don't melt the UHMW bushings when you weld
5) Finish welding in the tabs
6) Spray paint everything for protection

The tabs:

Finished product (again)

 

[P1K5Dave]

A note on drilling out your existing tabs to do the 2-bolt kit: In the instructions, Jared mentions using a step drill and an angle attachment to get in there. I bought a 90 degree attachment for my drill for $25. It does not have a chuck, just a 1/4 hex to accept a bit. I started with a harbor freight step drill, and I made it through one of the tabs, and it broke on the second one. He says he uses a Milwaukee step bit and it works for him, maybe you go that route.

Fortunately, my buddy has a set of Milwaukee drill bits that have 1/4" hex shafts, and he had one in 1/2". The bit wasn't too long to get in there, and it did the job perfectly. Figure out your plan for drilling.

 

[P1K5Dave]

I only have a 120V flux wire welder, and I was apprehensive about taking on the job of welding in those tabs with it. At my request, Jared sent a few extra tabs that were not up to par, for me to practice welding on.

I used to be pretty good with a stick welder, but it was a no-go with this thing. I just couldn't lay down a bead I was satisfied with.

So I put it together with the tabs just sitting on the frame, loaded it on the trailer, and took it to a local welder. He was able to knock them out in 20 minutes, counting my disassembly / reassembly between the tack welds and the full weld.

 

[P1K5Dave]

Now, the biggest caveat about installing the TTC 3" arm kit: The supplied ball joints need washers on the stud, between the castle nut and the hub, and this is not mentioned in the installation instructions. I talked to him about this, and I don't know if he wasn't aware of any problem or what, but I hope he'll include the washers you need and update the instructions going forward.

>>>Edit 9/21/21 - I now know why this was a problem: cheap, faulty ball joints shipped with my kit. See follow-up post P1000 - P1K5Dave's TTC 3" Lift and Fox Shock Install
<<<<

Here's what happened - I did pre-assembly to take it to the welder, and put the ball joints in with the provided hardware. The first thing we noticed was that on the lower ball joint, the castle nut spun well past the cotter key holes, which would have rendered the cotter key useless. We made note of this, planned to get washers, and went ahead anyway since we still had final assembly to do after welding.

On the uppers, we wound up tightening them down just a bit, and later learned that because of the stud length, we had run the castle nut up onto the shaft, past the threads. This caused a lot of grief in final assembly, as we couldn't get that nut to come back off because the shaft would just spin in the ball joint. After a few hours of struggling with it, I got frustrated and went nuclear on it with the ball joint tool, and wound up messing up my boot trying to get it apart.

I wound up having to take the whole hub off, put it in a vise, and use a chisel on the castle nut to break it free.

Then I had to buy another new ball joint. I'll keep this one for a trail repair part.

Moral of the story: Get the right size washers you need to install your ball joints, and make sure that it's the appropriate thickness needed to bring the castle nut up to the cotter key hole properly.

(edit - I'll try to get some pics of the spacing washers I put on them and add them later.)

 

[P1K5Dave]

The supplied SATV inner tie rod ends (where you bolt your tie rod up to the steering box) are different than stock, as far as assembly is concerned.

The stockers have that stamped retaining washer, or locking whatever they call it. It's quite effective at putting locking force on that connection after you've installed it.

The SATV ends just thread up flush to your steering box, and it's recommended that you put it together TIGHT with red thread locker. It's hard to get those really tight with your access to the steering box and all, but I'd guess I was able to get about 45-50 ft lbs on them.