Did some one say "what's a ball joint flip"

[Crash]

If you believe that gm did a great job and we should never change anything, take the blue pill, hit the back button and believe what you want to believe. Or take the red pill, keep reading and see how this goes.

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My truck is cranked up and rides pretty crappy, that's the way I bought it. I have 3 girls so there isn't much in the truck fund for a regular lift kit and I like parking in my garage. So my point is I like how tall my truck is and I don't have much money to spend on it.
So I needed to replace my upper ball joints, I figured it would be a good time to do a ball joint flip. I will need longer shocks to take advantage of it but that will have to wait until my tax return comes in.

Stock

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Stock clearance on the stop

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New ball joint flipped

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New clearance

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Wheel clearance with nbs 17's

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My little helper

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An alignment is mandatory, this mod caused tons of positive camber.
I will update this when I get longer shocks.

 

[93SierraWT]

I think you need to paint your undercarriage.

 

[Crash]

I know it's crusty, needs more than just some paint.

 

[Blue95]

Ride like stock now?

 

[Crash]

No, better but still stif the shocks are holding it back from riding good. I've only drove it 3 miles to work so far.

 

[Blue95]

What kind of shocks?

 

[Crash]

I'm thinking Rancho RS5000, Skyjacker Hydro's, or Rough Country's, just cheep ones, they just need to be longer.

 

[SixSpeedSS]

If you believe that gm did a great job and we should never change anything, take the blue pill, hit the back button and believe what you want to believe. Or take the red pill, keep reading and see how this goes.

When I started to read your post, I decided to take the red pill, as I believe GM did a great job engineering these trucks, but also feel there is a ton of improvement in many areas of these trucks.

Now after reading your post I wanna go back and take the blue pill. Common sense tells me that with the upper ball joint flange on top of the upper control arm and those four small bolts (5/16" maybe?) decide to break (due to the stress that is on them from the torsion bar trying to pry the spindle from the ball joint - supporting the weight of such a heavy vehicle), the flange will keep the upper ball joint and control arm from completely separating. Now with your setup, you can only rely on the four small bolts to keep this setup together when rolling down the highway. When these four small bolts decide they don't want to hold this all together anymore, one can probably guess a major accident will occur. Now if this truck spends any time off road and the suspension is at max articulation, I can guaruntee the forces involved will try to break theose small bolts.

I applaud your efforts for trying to fix an issue in these trucks, but I'll rely on the millions of dollars of engineering money that went into having the flange on top of the control arm. Basic knowledge of the laws of physics has made my decision.

 

[Swims350]

nice, still worries me on doing it tho, thinking it's not as strong flipped. I wonder if it'd clear stock 98 ish saw blades?

 

[ChrisAU]

When I started to read your post, I decided to take the red pill, as I believe GM did a great job engineering these trucks, but also feel there is a ton of improvement in many areas of these trucks.

Now after reading your post I wanna go back and take the blue pill. Common sense tells me that with the upper ball joint flange on top of the upper control arm and those four small bolts (5/16" maybe?) decide to break (due to the stress that is on them from the torsion bar trying to pry the spindle from the ball joint - supporting the weight of such a heavy vehicle), the flange will keep the upper ball joint and control arm from completely separating. Now with your setup, you can only rely on the four small bolts to keep this setup together when rolling down the highway. When these four small bolts decide they don't want to hold this all together anymore, one can probably guess a major accident will occur. Now if this truck spends any time off road and the suspension is at max articulation, I can guaruntee the forces involved will try to break theose small bolts.

I applaud your efforts for trying to fix an issue in these trucks, but I'll rely on the millions of dollars of engineering money that went into having the flange on top of the control arm. Basic knowledge of the laws of physics has made my decision.

I agree with this.