Piecing together a lift
 

Hello. I've been looking for a bit for information about suspension lifts, but now am struggling to find much for my 98 4.6 SuperCrew 4x4 in the way of kits. It seems that RC is my only option and I havent heard much good about them. This truck is my DD, but I do occasionally go offroad and run some mild trails. So instead, Im thinking of how to piece together a 3"-4" lift that accommodates me. I'm aware that there are different ways to do this and this seems somewhat broad, but I was curious what others had experienced and what method worked best for them.
Also, I'm not super interested in anything with the torsion bars getting tweaked. Thanks for the help!

Zone kit and call it a day. Rough country is garbage I wouldn't run it on a golf cart let alone anything in public roads. It's really the bottom of the barrel. zone is BDS, made in the same warehouse by the same company. It's just their economic line.

I installed the Zone suspension lift kit. Very well made. I believe they only offer a 6" suspension lift (although you can choose the option of only 5" lift in the rear to level the truck - that's what I ordered). I am very happy with the product. It is a big job, but the instructions are good. I did it myself working alone.

You are probably right. 35" tires look perfect. 33's will probably look a little small.

I would also recommend the zone 6 inch kit with 35's. If you are not towing or offroading every weekend, then you should be fine without re gearing

Here is a crazy idea. I don't know if it would work or not...

The Rough County (RC) lift looks OK,especially the knuckles, but its biggest problem is with the cross members that lower the front differential and also lower the lower-control-arm mounting points. On the better lifts, those cross members are really big, beefy single pieces of steel (actually 2 pieces as there are 2 cross members). The rough county kit comes with cross members that are made up of a number of pieces that need to be bolted together. I'm sure that the RC uses their approach to either simplify manufacturing, simplify installation, reduce cost, or all of the above. Some have complained that you get a lot of flexing and eventually loosening of the cross members where they are bolted together.

Now the crazy idea - Perhaps you could install the RC cross members then weld the pieces together to make them more solid. Obviously you would only weld the cross member pieces together, not weld the cross member to other parts of the truck. I actually did think about doing this before deciding to just go with the Zone lift. Maybe someone has tried this.

Here is 6" and 33x12.50's I ran the setup for a long time and honestly it was great. Attachment 552485