Ok, this has been a very long time coming, but I have the 60 back on the road, but now with A/C, Sniper EFI and new tires in addition to the suspension refresh.
I’ll cut straight to the chase: the General Springs rear leafs didn’t solve the sag issue, which is a shame because the ride is really incredible. Here’s what it looked like with new tires and the suspension before I addressed the sag:
It’s not horrible, and the rear fender well does swoop lower than the front which exacerbates the visual impact, but I couldn’t live with looking at that sag every day.
I ended up going to Spring Service outside of Greenville, SC. The owner Charlie is probably the best person in the upstate when it comes to leaf springs, air lifts, etc. They work on some huge rigs, but dad’s shop has sent thousands of customers like me there over the years.
On Charlie’s advice I ended up adding a very thin leaf and re-arching the springs slightly to make up the 1-2” difference. The leaf they added retains 90% or more of the ride quality while helping manage sag with more tongue weight when towing loads. We talked about air bags to solve the issue, but he said that since I’m going to drive this thing all the time that it’s better to solve the problem at the root.
The result is exactly what I was going for - pretty much right back to the stock setup. I might have gone slightly higher on the re-arch, but on flat ground it measures perfect.
If I had to do it over, I would have just had Spring Service make the rear springs. It would have been more expensive initially, but would have been right out of the gate. The fronts from General Spring are perfect.
Overall, I’m incredibly happy with the ride quality going back to stock. My wife loves driving it, the older 2 of my 3 kids can load into the back easily themselves, and with the overdrive from the 5 speed and A/C, it’s a nice drive up to the mountains.
