Hey folks,

Seen a lot of questions about this kit, and I figured I'd give an overall review of my experience with the kit.

First and foremost, with a truck that is nearly 20 years old, I didn't want to bury $$$ into it to make it look a little less.. droopy, for lack of a better word. Overall height in the front before installation was about 21-22" from center of the hub to the top of the fender. On the rears, I was at about the same height at 22-23."

Prior to installing the kit, I decided to go ahead and replace the upper and lower control arms, sway bar linkages, and shocks. At 155000 miles on a used truck, it isn't surprising that the Motorcraft quality we've all come to adore has since fallen by the wayside.

After installation of the new arms and joints, I began install on the torsion keys. At initial glance, they seem to match the same quality as the factory keys. They are touted as being forged, and the look, feel, and weight of the keys seems to indicate the same, which is reassuring. Install was a pain due to typical dirt/ rust seizing torsion keys to the bar. After some carefully placed blows of a hammer, the old key fell out, and I was able to install the new keys. The rear blocks were some sort of plastic compound, and lined up well with the bump stop and rear axle mount. Rear shackles were thicker than stock, and have a nice finish; overall, fairly nice quality of finish from a kit that costs $200 and change.

The kit also came with the Roush Country N2.0 shocks. While many have complained about the chock's stiffness, I actually find the added support reassuring of the truck's footing, and seems to "dance" less than Gabriel's, Monroes etc. Damping is switch and clean, and has made comfort and control much better.

Overall height in the front at initial install was 26" center hub to top of wheel wheel; this was due to initial stiffness of the dampers and keys being too tight; After adjustments and a reset, the front is sitting at a healthy 24.5." The rear has bumped to 25," which seemed too good to be true. This was largely due to the worn out shocks on it prior to install.

Overall, I would give the product a 3 1/2 to 4 out of 5 stars.

The quality of the packaging, neatness of instructions, and product finish were not as professional as I would have liked, and would have expected from any more expensive/ reputable company. However, the overall ride 100 miles in has not been bouncy, uncomfortable, or dangerous in feel. The ride quality is drastically different from the stock ride, and I would consider it an improvement to stock keys cranked. I would buy the product again, and have been happy so far asides from the lackluster finish and instructions. I will update this thread at 5,000 miles and let y'all know how the shocks age.

 

That doesnt sound too bad. Let us know how it goes.

 

All you did was waste money with something you could do with stock keys. You will wear out the front end faster and tweak the torsion bars more.

 

I bought that kit then read that stock keys would take my truck to the height I needed. They let you take your truck to the highest point without destroying the truck too back. Really the only thing you got was new shocks and stacked blocks in the rear. Maybe some bad repair bills in the future, who knows.

 

Not exactly. He did stress his tbars more but so does cranking your current keys. If you crank your bars and only get 23" instead of the 24.25" that is considered the max then using this kit to gain that extra inch isnt going to automatically cause catastrophic failure.

 

Wrong. Stock keys will bring a truck to 24.25" with no problem. If stocks wont then the torsion bars are weakened due to age. All these will do is make them sag even more expotentially faster. So in the end they will cause issue becuase the increased amount of load put on the torsion bars.

 

Thats the point I was trying to make. On my old black truck I couldnt get any better than 23.5" so I backed them down to 23" and just let it ride. I agree replacing the tortion bars would be a better bet but he wont explode cv's or ball joints any faster just because he has the kit vs. doing the same thing with the stock setup.

 

The aftermarket keys will allow him to go up higher than what is recommended max making an extreme angle on the CV's and nuking them. A lot of kids will just max them out because they want as much lift for as cheap as possible. My stock keys got my just over 25" and that's how I rode it for a while. I had to replace the CV's within a month (I have no idea how many miles where on the old ones, they could have been 99% shot and that just did the deed).

 

Yeh I know a lot of ppl will do that but he said in his original post that he pulled them down within the safe range so he had to do some research on it.