Full Tube Chassis?

[GMracer]

Well here is my dilemma I have a 2001 Silverado 2wd currently rebuild frame up air ride suspension but setup for a mean street high horsepower setup. I took the factory frame and lowered the body mounts to get the the frame tucked up a little more inside the body, notched the rear half to accommodate the low stance and ran a 4link setup with a pan hard. Up front I setup a torsion style bracket with bags and planned to run ART DA shocks to dial in my ride.

Now my thinking is since the factory frame is designed to be about 5" taller than what my ride height will be, the front suspension geometry will be way off, as in the control arms instead of being parallel to the ground they will point upwards a bit. Now I could run drop spindles (2") but still the geometry wouldn't be ideal.

Lately I've been thinking of just building a full tube chassis and re-setup the front suspension to get the arms back to the being parallel to the ground like they are at factory ride height. The rear half I am redoing no matter what, (triangulated 4link setup inboard with 20x15 wheels out back) but this front half is what determines whether I do just a back half or a full tube chassis. Do you think the factory geometry would be adequate enough? I'm really open to opinions, this forum is a lot more technical to suspension that my other forums.

Thanks in advance for all the help!

[Twentyover]

Maybe Z the frame under the front clip to help fix the geometry and lower the core support etc?

[GMracer]

The motor would get too close to the hood, and the core support has been lowered for the body drop... do these angles look as bad as Im making them out to be, ride height I believe is a little higher and I could get them done more with spindles.
Here are the uppers
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2008/02/IMG_2897-1.jpg
lowers are under frame, so I don't think it'd be all that easy to raise those ones up compared the the fronts, seems like the amount of work to do that would just lead to doing full tube anyway.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2008/03/IMG_2567-1.jpg
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2008/03/IMG_2571-1.jpg

[Bruning Auto Design]

The location of the stock rack is an issue. This truck is bagged front & rear on 22's w/drop spindles (among other things...). Also, all the stock crossmembers have been worked over as well and nothing hangs below the frame. This truck is a daily driver and handles nice, but has bump steer issues. Picked up some lowered control arms recently and there are plans in the works to address the bump steer.

For your goals, it would be cool to use an Art Morrison front clip w/C5 suspension,,,, lot's of work regardless if you go the tube chassis route....

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/noimg.gif

[parsonsj]

Yes, those angles on the control arms are as bad as you think they are. You might be OK for cruising around town, but you will probably find the geometry exhibits excessive side scrub and bumpsteer. You'll find the truck wandering all over the road.

jp

[GMracer]

that is what I'm figuring, so the plan is to keep these arms, and set the hubs at ride height and when I build the new front clip actually bring the arms to the frame same geometry as stock just higher up, and for the rack I plan on bring the steering rack upwards as much as possible also. If I have to flip the tierods I may but I'm going to try to avoid that since the arc they travel when they're flipped will cause toe in at full lift and toe out when its laid out.