I just lifted the front of my truck with new torsion keys. I ran into problems putting the new ones in though.
I put a two jaw puller on the crossmember, and before I have the keys high enough to put the threaded blocks back in, the crossmember was so bent from the puller, one of the jaws fell off.
I would definitely recomend to weld a piece of 1/4 inch thick steel to the crossmember on both the front and the back at both ends. It helps reinforce it a lot. That is the only way that I was able to finish putting the keys in.
I'm not sure if anybody else has ran into this problem before or not, but I just thought that I would throw it out there.

 

Would a torsion bar loader/unloader tool have done the job without the tweaked crossmember or the plate steel? I'm not entirely too sure what that tool looks like much less how exactly it works...I just remember reading that for safety that's the best thing.

Glad you got em in though!

 

I'm honestly not sure. From what I've been told is the GM torsion bar tool is only a 5 ton 2 jaw puller.
I don't know if that is correct, but I just thought I would throw my experience out for othersto maybe help them.

 

It is not just a puller. There are actually two different loading/unloading tool styles you can get. One looks like a beefy C-Clamp:


And the others look like this:





the top one is a designated GM only part. The bottomtwo arerated to also work on Ford trucks.

Using a two jaw puller will do nothing more than damage your corssmember. You can use a C-clamp but it isnt very safe.

 

no pic on tool #2.

And how does the beefy c clamp help...dont you have to actually twist the bar to pre-load? Or what is involved?

 

Here ya go... this should explain.....


You must first compress/load the barwith the beefy c-clamp thing. Then you remove the adjuster bolt/block. You then carefully unload the bar by unscrewing said torsion tool. To re-install you reverse that process...

 

That sure would have made it easier..

 

hey 95_4door just wondering what you think of your t key lift how much height did you get? and how does she ride?

 

I got about 5-6 inches over the lowered height. It was already lowered when I got it, so I can't really tell you how much over stock.
I haven't even had a chance to drive it yet. I just got my motor running, but it still has open headers, and I don't want to bring that much attention to me. (a v8 with open headers is pretty loud)

 

yea with mine it just separated the upper control arm and it was a lot easier to get the key in that way