OK, I went out and got some lakewood universal traction bars, and here's my
installation notes.
Try to tighten up the outer u-bolt nuts first, since they will interfere
with the wheels first. Keep in mind, I'm suggesting biasing you tightening
sequence to the outside. If you tighten the outers up fully first, you'll
get the bars on crooked, and that's no good.
The bars will have to go as far forward as possible. But you can't put them
right up against the spring mount, because then you cant get the wrench
off. Just get them as far forward as possible while still being able to get
the wrench off.
Put the snubber in the forward-most hole before you put the bars on the
truck. Its just easier that way.
Even so, the snubber will hit the springs just aft of the eye. We would
like to have the snubber hit on the eye but it just doesn't work out that
way.
On my RC R/T, the snubber ended up 1 and 1/2 inches below the spring.
Lakewood recommends .5 inches. To achieve this, I calculated that I'll need
about a 13/16 spacer between the rear traction bar mount and the leaf
spring. I'll let you all know how it works when I get this accomplished.
As it is (with the 1-1/2 inch space between the snubber and the spring),
the traction bars don't appear to make any difference. The truck burns just
as much rubber from a stop on normal pavement. I won't be able to go to the
track till mid august (I'm off to the Canadian rockies for a huge fishing
trip). But without the traction bars, I got 60' times of about 2.3 seconds.
My Throttle body mods that I mentioned will be postponed even further. I'll
get the snubber-to-spring distance to .5 inches and then tell y'all how it
worked.
As always, stay tuned.
-Mike Miller
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