Yeah you could start with the tbar shackles and 31s and you will be amazed at what it will actually be capable of. Heck you may find that thats all you need or it may push you to go bigger sooner. Either way it's a good place to start.

 

Fully Agree!

 

Can always go bigger

Rex, when you did your shackles did you do your keys at the same time or just do a tighten?

 

Just tightened them. Also I suggest start spraying your shackle bolts today and everyday with PB blaster until you are ready to swap them. I read the horror stories of people having issues and took this approach as a preventative measure and mine were off and new ones on in 30 minutes flat!

 

how hard is it to do a SFA using the kits they sell?

is it pretty much just find your axles, springs, and steering and bolt it all together?

i fabricated all my own crap with old k5 blazer stuff i had laying around, bunch of tubing and square stock. took me about 4 months id guess about 15-20 hours a week messing with it before it was drive-able

if i ever have to do it again i would probably just buy the kit, it was a pain. fun but a pain

 

I don't have any first hand experience with the ORD kit but from what I have seen around the forums its a pretty straight forward install with that kit. I have seen a thread or two that pulled in the garage on Friday night and test drove the truck Sunday afternoon with the ORD kit. That requires a lot of research and hoping like hell you have all of the little pcs you don't usually think about ready to go along with already having your axles built/freshened up or whatever you may need to do to them. Beyond that like you said its just a matter of finding/having all the other pcs for the swap and bolting it together. I used the Sky Manufacturing kit (or at least the front hanger) and with some wondering around the internet found that Ford ranger rear shackle hangers are cheap and seem to work perfect to keep the rear of the springs up inside the frame rails and nicely out of the way. A few others have used them since I posted about using them and seem to have the same results I did. If I had to do it again I would probably make my own front cross member and the ranger shackles for the next setup.