Why Do We Do It?
If you suffer from the “Stink Bug Look“, if factory ride height is just to high, your friends have “the look” and you don’t, were here for you! We can help you style your truck or suv, get you the stance you want and help you install it yourself!
Here’s why we do it! Not that long ago, before the internet, the only way to find information on how to lower your truck, and find parts to do it was a local speed shop and a few magazines from newstands. There were a couple of good magazines written by enthusiasts for enthusiasts but they turned into corporate run, written collections of advertisers mailed to you every month. Good for stock holders, bad for the enthusiasts. The good, doable tech articles turned into a freak show of wildly modified trucks that we couldn’t do at home even if one of our buddies had a well equipped garage, most of us needed to drive our trucks to work on Monday morning anyway! 6 month makeovers were fun to read about but didn’t help us much.
That’s where DJM University comes in, here is a collection of actual magazine tech articles as well as “how to” articles written for the web. Performance and Style helps you with topics related to lowering. Tools of The Trade section is great, there you learn about the different suspension parts used to lower trucks and suv’s, how they work and what might be the best choice for you, your truck, your tools and skill level. How Lowering Works are articles about actual installations and how they were done. GarageX are fun videos from our friends in New England installing parts outside in the dead of winter proving that you can do it too! Plus a direct link to calmaxsuspension.com a blog dedicated to tech questions from anyone about lowering trucks and SUV's. Pictures, video, everything you need to make the right choice for you. Now you walk out to go for a ride there is a giant smile on your face when you get in and fire her up!
So it’s your turn, learn what you need to lower your project truck, find the right parts, and send us a picture of what you’ve done. We would love to see!
Ready To Go?
Ready to go, done your research and found yourself in a information box canyon? Let's ease your pain and see if we can get you going!
Starting with what you can see, wheels and tires! This is the problem isn’t it, the wheels and tires and how they sit in the fender well. Even if you want to scrape the pavement you first have to do something about that fender gap! Your thinking well duh, but how to fix that problem. You may have heard about spindles, control arms, coil springs, torsion bars & keys and maybe even hacking by cutting or heating your factory suspension parts. What to do? It depends on your truck, your budget, your mechanical resources.
The Front End
The story in the front is dependent on the factory design, in the simplest terms you have either a coil spring or a torsion bar front suspension. As a rule, especially with older trucks, 2WD’s are coil spring type and 4WD’s are torsion bar types. Of course like all rules there are exceptions so forgive me if this doesn’t conform exactly to your situation, have some patience it gets better. Most (but not all) lowering projects are built on 2wd platforms, so coil spring suspensions have the most options for lowering. How do they work and what parts do I need to know about? A typical truck or suv coil spring front end has upper and lower control arms (a arms) coil springs and spindles. You can learn more about what these parts do and how you can lower your truck with them, just click and read. Then, when you look at the parts available for your truck it will make much more sense!
The Rear End
Just like the front, the rear is dependent on factory design. Except for a few suvs and pick ups that sport rear coil springs, most trucks have leaf springs in the rear. You will see things like shackles, hanger & shackles, flip kits and block kits that are used to lower the rear. Just click and read about the parts that interest or pertain to your truck before you search for the parts you need to lower!
If you have questions that aren’t answered after reading, contact us, we will talk to you on the phone, or you can shoot us an e-mail, or use the Calmax Suspension site for more tech info. Follow the link for an in depth explanation of how they work and more important - how they lower!