6 inch questions....

[skyrocco16v]

i have a stock 86 jimmy... i've head all sorts of roumors as to what i need to do to lift it 6 inches.... my plans are shackle flip in the rear with either 2 inch block (not a huge fan of) or 2 in add-a-leaf. and 6 inch tuff country springs up front, and 35's. i know i need a dropped steering arm... but what about drive shafts? i know the 6 in. tuff country kit comes with a t-case drop kit.
just wondering what else i'm going to have to do to get this to work right. i really don't want to half a** it either.
thanks,
corey

 

[kore0015]

I did a 6" lift on my 80 Blazer recently. Tuff country with all new springs, steering arm, brake line extensions, t-case drop. I ran into a lot of problems with my front drive shaft. It took a few trips to a drive shaft shop and a few hundred dollars to do. (Part of this was the fact that my shaft needed to be entirely rebuilt and resplined.)

The CV joint on the front shaft required a lot of grinding and some lengthening. They told me if they ground it any more it would over extend and fall apart. And they neglected to balance the shaft the first time. Said it wasn't really necessary on the front shaft. Well it is when you grind away a bunch of metal.

My rear shaft worked okay, but I had it lengthened. After the lift there was only about an 1.5" of the splines engaged as opposed to the orginal 6". I didn't want to put all the power of my engine on 1.5" of 26 year old steel.

I've heard some guys recommend against the t-case drop, as it actually puts a harder angle on the front shaft. If you don't drop the t-case, you'll probably need to lengthen the rear shaft, but your front shaft won't need nearly as much butchering as mine did.

 

[Kartoon]

so how much did you get your rear shaft lengthened?

 

[kore0015]

I don't recall the actual length. I want to say it was like 3". The shop said I wanted about 1" of shaft showing out of the tail housing. Measuring for this was a pain in the ass. I disconnected the shaft from the rear yolk, pushed it into the transmission until 1" was sticking out. Measure the distance from the center of the front joint to where the center of the rear joint would be if it was connected. It took some work trying to hold the shaft in place and holding both ends of the tape measure at the same time.