DRs and 05 Diff cover installed with pics!!

[Titan1080]

Installed all the goods this afternoon, man these DRs are nice!! The ride is soo much better than with the Daystars (well, DUH!) And the new diff cover looks sweet. And here's the part where you guys will hate me, right now I don't have time to talk about the installation and upload pics. Have to go clean up, grade my students' autocad portfolios, get a lesson ready for tomorrow, eat dinner, go to bed and get some sleep cause I'm dog tired and class is at 8am. Everything will go up tomorrow afternoon, in the meantime, here's a teaser:

[K-MU]

Great choice on the coilover, what size lift did you set the DR coilovers to? we need before and after pics...

Did you notice any improvement on wet weather handling with those tires siped?

[Titan1080]

Yeah, the tires do handle a little better on wet roads. And here's the rest of the install story:



Here's the stock, non-Rancho shock with the Daystar 2.5" leveling kit. If you note on the next pic, the spacers put such a large load on the driver's side that a large hammer and a gorilla was required to remove the lower shock bolt. The passenger side was a little easier, but the shock was stuck in the bracket. What I did was gently jack up the lower a-arm until it popped out. Then it should have been a simple matter to remove the old strut, but due to the spacers, it took some manuvering to get it out, especially since I really didn't want to disconnect the sway bar or the steering link.




EDIT: I was not very impressed with the design of the Daystar kit now that I'm looking at it. Note the gap above the spring spacer caused by the bolt. This didn't cause any problems and the setup still works, but it's just bad designing IMO.



Next, the DRs went in. They are slightly smaller than the stock strut with the spacers, since I left them at the factory setting of 2", so with a little extra clearance over the old ones, they went right in with no problems.



The next pic details the new lower shock mount. Note the spacers, the smaller spacer needs to be towards the front of the truck to provide more clearance from the axle on 4x4 models.

[Titan1080]

Next up was the new 05/06 OEM Diff cover. One thing I really ought to have done was to blast off the dirt and mud from the axle, but not a whole lot of thinking occurred throughout the installation:



After 25K miles, the gear oil was obviously pretty dirty. Being an 04, it was the old (dino?) 80w90 oil. The magnet didn't seem to me to have a lot of shavings on it, but then, I've never changed the gear oil on any diffs on any vehicles that I've had.



Here's a closeup of the spider and side gears. The wear pattern appears to be good and my low-tech non-destructive evaluation equipment (eyeball ) doesn't detect any flaws, cracks, or defects.



Finally, with a healthy bead of Permatex Ultra Grey around the edges and bolts, the new cover went on. After letting it set for a little bit, I filled the pumpkin with a little under 2.5 quarts of Mobil 1 75w140 synthetic gear oil, with the level just a tiny bit below the lip of the filler port. With everything done, I put the Donahoe Racing sticker on my back window, did some figure 8s and donuts to get the oil circulated, and called it a night. So here's a question: since I didn't mess with any of the steering components, should I still get an alignment as insurance against unknown tweaking? Also, I didn't think to do before and after measurements, but my eye does tell me that the front is a little lower than it was. I'll take a tape measure from the center of the wheel hub to the fender this afternoon sometime and post.

[FlimFlamMan]

Boy those DR's sure look purty.

Great post/tutorial.

Changing from the daystar to the dr's... my guess would be to get an alignment.

*disclaimer* I'm not pro with this stuff... just my .02.