CruiseOrlando
Conveniently Enhanced
First of all, I'd like to thank a few people. Roger over at 4Crawler.com for putting together a great kit for the body lift.
Second, to a few people who put together previous threads on putting the body lift in. It got me most of the way there, but there were a lot of things that I discovered for myself, so I wanted to document them for some others who might be thinking about doing this to their truck.
If you'd like to read the previous threads I found helpful, they are:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/206908-product-review-4crawler-roger-brown-1-body-lift.html
and
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/488804-80-series-body-lift.html
Now, let's get something clear here: this is not a pleasant job. You really should have two people, it'll make your life easier. And here's the list of things you're going to need to do in order to complete this job:
- Remove driver and passenger seats
- Pull all interior trim parts along the driver and passenger sides so you can pull up the carpet along the sides
- Pull the battery and the battery tray
- Remove the front grill and headlights
- Remove the bolts for the fan shroud, and loosen it up (so the radiator can move)
- It will help if you remove the bumper flare pieces. You don't have to, but it will probably save time
- If you live in the rust belt, PB blast the 10 locations for about a week or two before starting
If I'd known all of that before I started, it would have prepared me a little more - at least mentally - and saved me a lot of time and frustration. More on that later.
So if you're still looking to get started on this, first locate the 10 bolts that hold the body to the frame. Spray 'em if you got 'em. And oh, it's a good idea to do this after the truck has cooled off, because you'll be working up close and personal with the exhaust.
Go around and remove the bolts on one side, and then loosen the ones on the other. I put the nuts just about to the end of the bolt. The more rusted they are, the more likely you'll be needing help - UNLESS you're talking about the rear bolts. These suckers are a real pain in the butt. What I found out after searching on Mud (this was after dinking around with the things for probably an hour) is that there is a special access location you have to pull the cover for. Oh, did I mention it's a great thing to have trim removal tools? Well, it is, and they'll save you some frustration as well. Here's a picture of one of the access holes after I removed the cover:
The cover plate looks like this:
Once you have the plate off, you can access the top of the bolt, and pull it out if you have small hands. This is territory for small kids hands, but as dirty as my truck is, I wouldn't want to ask that of my daughter. Anyway, I finally wrestled the bolt out.
Now, for raising the body up, you're going to need to have some 2x4's trimmed up. I needed somewhere between 7-9 of them, depending on the situation. Since balancing 7 2x4's isn't a good idea, I suggest that you nail/screw a few of them together in groups of 2 or 3 2x4's. This will not only make for a more stable setup, but you also won't be cussing every time it falls apart or you have to reset.
I was unable to find a single jacking point that would allow me to set all the pucks in place. As has been mentioned before, good jacking points are on the underside of the floor (NOT the rocker panels!). Get under your truck and look - you'll see there's an area that a 2x4 can fit nicely into. Start right between bolts 2 & 3 (basically under the drivers's seat area) and go slow. Watch for streching lines, etc - you shouldn't see any. You also should have loosened up the fan shroud so it won't come in contact with the fan blades. The truck will raise up as some of the weight is removed from the suspension. Eventually that'll stop, and the body itself will start going up. You'll see the gap increasing between between the body and the mounts. When you've got just over an inch, you can slide in a puck. Keep your fingers out of the area between the body and the truck - just be careful when you're doing this. If those blocks slip, you're going to be seriously hurt.
Once you slide the pucks in, you can put the new bolts in. If you haven't already, remove the black plugs (remember that trim removal tool? It comes in handy again). You'll know where they are - they're directly above the mount points!
The tricky part comes in the front and rear locations. For the front, I had to get that jack pushing almost uncomfortably high in order to give the front mount enough clearance to slide the puck in. This is also the point where the "why" gets answered about removing the battery box.
Here's a picture of the pesky bolt from the passenger side. As you can see, it'd down there in a place that's not exactly accessible.
But I have a solution. Get yourself some small rare-earth magnets. Put them on the end of a 3/8 or so extension. And lower it down in that hole! Bingo, problem solved in a few seconds.
You may opt to put the new bolts in that same way, whatever floats your boat.
Now... back to the big problem child. The rear bolts. Some people opted to put them in upside down. I found out you can put them in the right way, if you do a few things. First of all, you're going to need to put your blocks as close to the rear of the truck as you can safely. For me, this was somewhere in front of the rear wheel well. Then you're going to need to jack it up enough to get the 1" puck in there and then some. If you can get another 1/2" or so additional room, you'll be able to finagle the bolt in the small space, out the hole, then get the puck threaded and back into the mount point. You also need to thread the washer on the bolt BEFORE you put it into the access hole, and keep it to the head of the bolt until you've got the threads down into the puck.
Remember what I said about a safe and secure jack point? That goes double for this stunt.
Once you do it, let the truck down and thread the bolt. And oh, make sure you pick the right nuts to go with the bolts. I got two different threaded nuts and had to get a replacement because I stripped one.
I just put the nuts enough so they started touching the plastic locking part.
Rinse and repeat the passenger side. Not much to note differently, but you will note that space is even tighter for the rear passenger side bolt - which is why you should do the driver side first and get a feel for the process. I removed the 3 10mm bolts that hold the bumper flare to the wheel well/fender to give a little more room for my hands. It's tight in there. If you take the bumper flare off completely it's a little more comfortable.
Now we move onto the FUN part... you have to move your radiator! It's sitting too high now since it's attached to the body. It's pretty straight forward, but it's a real pain in the butt because to get to some of the mounting locations you have to take a whole lot of crap off the truck.
So loosen all the mounting hardware for the radiator. The big mount at the bottom is obvious, there's also a 12mm nut holding a upper bolt in place. To get to that, you need to remove the front grill. Now, you might not HAVE to remove the headlights, but you're going to have a fun time if you don't. Not that removing the headlights is fun either... so pick your poison.
Here's the lower mount removed:
I took some masking tape and wrote on that. I also decided to shift the mount holes over about 1/8" of a inch to give myself a little more clearance from the hole that's in the middle of the bracket. Measure down 1"....
It also helps if you have a drill press. I didn't. A bench vise would also be wise.
Once you've drilled it out, you can remount it:
Now for the fun part. You also have to redrill that top mount. I guess you could do it from the front, but I did it from inside-out. I took the rubber grommet out of the upper mount, then I centered my drill in the hole and went SLOWLY.
If you do it right, it should look something like this:
And there you go. Rinse and repeat for the other side. Remount your shroud and you should be good to go.
By the way, I also released the tranny shifter rod as well. It's a 12mm bolt on a sliding shaft. Loosen it up, and give it a gentle back-and-forth. It should realign itself in a slightly different place - this should cure the issues some people were having with the shifter sticking.
So yeah, I call this a
job.
Second, to a few people who put together previous threads on putting the body lift in. It got me most of the way there, but there were a lot of things that I discovered for myself, so I wanted to document them for some others who might be thinking about doing this to their truck.
If you'd like to read the previous threads I found helpful, they are:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/206908-product-review-4crawler-roger-brown-1-body-lift.html
and
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/488804-80-series-body-lift.html
Now, let's get something clear here: this is not a pleasant job. You really should have two people, it'll make your life easier. And here's the list of things you're going to need to do in order to complete this job:
- Remove driver and passenger seats
- Pull all interior trim parts along the driver and passenger sides so you can pull up the carpet along the sides
- Pull the battery and the battery tray
- Remove the front grill and headlights
- Remove the bolts for the fan shroud, and loosen it up (so the radiator can move)
- It will help if you remove the bumper flare pieces. You don't have to, but it will probably save time
- If you live in the rust belt, PB blast the 10 locations for about a week or two before starting
If I'd known all of that before I started, it would have prepared me a little more - at least mentally - and saved me a lot of time and frustration. More on that later.
So if you're still looking to get started on this, first locate the 10 bolts that hold the body to the frame. Spray 'em if you got 'em. And oh, it's a good idea to do this after the truck has cooled off, because you'll be working up close and personal with the exhaust.
Go around and remove the bolts on one side, and then loosen the ones on the other. I put the nuts just about to the end of the bolt. The more rusted they are, the more likely you'll be needing help - UNLESS you're talking about the rear bolts. These suckers are a real pain in the butt. What I found out after searching on Mud (this was after dinking around with the things for probably an hour) is that there is a special access location you have to pull the cover for. Oh, did I mention it's a great thing to have trim removal tools? Well, it is, and they'll save you some frustration as well. Here's a picture of one of the access holes after I removed the cover:
The cover plate looks like this:
Once you have the plate off, you can access the top of the bolt, and pull it out if you have small hands. This is territory for small kids hands, but as dirty as my truck is, I wouldn't want to ask that of my daughter. Anyway, I finally wrestled the bolt out.
Now, for raising the body up, you're going to need to have some 2x4's trimmed up. I needed somewhere between 7-9 of them, depending on the situation. Since balancing 7 2x4's isn't a good idea, I suggest that you nail/screw a few of them together in groups of 2 or 3 2x4's. This will not only make for a more stable setup, but you also won't be cussing every time it falls apart or you have to reset.
I was unable to find a single jacking point that would allow me to set all the pucks in place. As has been mentioned before, good jacking points are on the underside of the floor (NOT the rocker panels!). Get under your truck and look - you'll see there's an area that a 2x4 can fit nicely into. Start right between bolts 2 & 3 (basically under the drivers's seat area) and go slow. Watch for streching lines, etc - you shouldn't see any. You also should have loosened up the fan shroud so it won't come in contact with the fan blades. The truck will raise up as some of the weight is removed from the suspension. Eventually that'll stop, and the body itself will start going up. You'll see the gap increasing between between the body and the mounts. When you've got just over an inch, you can slide in a puck. Keep your fingers out of the area between the body and the truck - just be careful when you're doing this. If those blocks slip, you're going to be seriously hurt.
Once you slide the pucks in, you can put the new bolts in. If you haven't already, remove the black plugs (remember that trim removal tool? It comes in handy again). You'll know where they are - they're directly above the mount points!
The tricky part comes in the front and rear locations. For the front, I had to get that jack pushing almost uncomfortably high in order to give the front mount enough clearance to slide the puck in. This is also the point where the "why" gets answered about removing the battery box.
Here's a picture of the pesky bolt from the passenger side. As you can see, it'd down there in a place that's not exactly accessible.
But I have a solution. Get yourself some small rare-earth magnets. Put them on the end of a 3/8 or so extension. And lower it down in that hole! Bingo, problem solved in a few seconds.
You may opt to put the new bolts in that same way, whatever floats your boat.
Now... back to the big problem child. The rear bolts. Some people opted to put them in upside down. I found out you can put them in the right way, if you do a few things. First of all, you're going to need to put your blocks as close to the rear of the truck as you can safely. For me, this was somewhere in front of the rear wheel well. Then you're going to need to jack it up enough to get the 1" puck in there and then some. If you can get another 1/2" or so additional room, you'll be able to finagle the bolt in the small space, out the hole, then get the puck threaded and back into the mount point. You also need to thread the washer on the bolt BEFORE you put it into the access hole, and keep it to the head of the bolt until you've got the threads down into the puck.
Remember what I said about a safe and secure jack point? That goes double for this stunt.
Once you do it, let the truck down and thread the bolt. And oh, make sure you pick the right nuts to go with the bolts. I got two different threaded nuts and had to get a replacement because I stripped one.
I just put the nuts enough so they started touching the plastic locking part.
Rinse and repeat the passenger side. Not much to note differently, but you will note that space is even tighter for the rear passenger side bolt - which is why you should do the driver side first and get a feel for the process. I removed the 3 10mm bolts that hold the bumper flare to the wheel well/fender to give a little more room for my hands. It's tight in there. If you take the bumper flare off completely it's a little more comfortable.
Now we move onto the FUN part... you have to move your radiator! It's sitting too high now since it's attached to the body. It's pretty straight forward, but it's a real pain in the butt because to get to some of the mounting locations you have to take a whole lot of crap off the truck.
So loosen all the mounting hardware for the radiator. The big mount at the bottom is obvious, there's also a 12mm nut holding a upper bolt in place. To get to that, you need to remove the front grill. Now, you might not HAVE to remove the headlights, but you're going to have a fun time if you don't. Not that removing the headlights is fun either... so pick your poison.
Here's the lower mount removed:
I took some masking tape and wrote on that. I also decided to shift the mount holes over about 1/8" of a inch to give myself a little more clearance from the hole that's in the middle of the bracket. Measure down 1"....
It also helps if you have a drill press. I didn't. A bench vise would also be wise.
Once you've drilled it out, you can remount it:
Now for the fun part. You also have to redrill that top mount. I guess you could do it from the front, but I did it from inside-out. I took the rubber grommet out of the upper mount, then I centered my drill in the hole and went SLOWLY.
If you do it right, it should look something like this:
And there you go. Rinse and repeat for the other side. Remount your shroud and you should be good to go.
By the way, I also released the tranny shifter rod as well. It's a 12mm bolt on a sliding shaft. Loosen it up, and give it a gentle back-and-forth. It should realign itself in a slightly different place - this should cure the issues some people were having with the shifter sticking.
So yeah, I call this a
job.
I read through the other helpful threads but this is really the thread I have been waiting for. I have a 1.5" Kit from 4Crawler sitting in a box in the garage for the past couple months. I have been waiting to convince a friend to come lend a hand, but most my friends have their own trucks to work on or are just lazy 
