Ok well ive been told by many people on here to crank my t bars and stuff but i have a bunch of friends that have jacked up jeeps and trucks that are telling me not to..is it worth the crank?

 

From an appearance standpoint it's a personal decision, but it's a fact that the more you change the torsion bar height from stock, the more strain you put on the suspension parts causing accelerated wear.

 

not worth it imo

how much lift do you want?

2" BL are fairly cheap.

 

yeah i want to get a 2" body so i can fit 31's on there but i wanted some ground clearence for my frame.

 

What kind of vehicle are we dealing with here and what kind of 31" tires did you have in mind? I fit 31" tires under my stock ride height with barely any problems. It's the square tread on the sidewalls like BFG AT's that screws you up. It hits the inside of your wheel well when you turn hard which not only wears on your truck, it wears the tire.

 

i have a 98 4dr blazer i want 31x10.50 otr treadwrights

 

That's a pretty deep knobby tread on those bad-boys; however, the edges of the tread aren't square. That's good! You may try and mount one on the front to see how it fits when you turn the wheel. With 3 or 4 cranks on the torsion bar, I think you'll be ok. Whoever is spinning them onto the rims just has to be mindful of the fit when they're mounting them. Try one before you put them all on.

Click on my red letters below to see how snug everything was in my wheel wells before I turned the T-bars up.

 

My friend tells me a lift on a suspension like on the Blazer is really expensive.
I was thinking 6" lift. How much would that cost?
I think there are leaf spring kits for 2" lifts though.

 

Like some said before, cranking your t-bars will wear your suspension faster than normal. I would suggest tracking down a kit for yours like shackles with the keys, otherwise it really depends on how high you eventually want to go!! Rcars2 will chime in here hopefully he has his lifted on 33's but also had 31's on his!!

 

LOL, its almost like i have an annoucer to indtroce me, LOL. (im probably gonna pay for that comment)


For 31's you can go the t-bar route with some shackles or add-a-leafs but you will hit some front end wear issues in terms of ball joints and cv's. Ball joints are easy because you can grease them so hit them with grease every oil change and you will be good. CV's, well you are kinda at the mercy of whats there because they arent greaseable. Thankfully they are pretty resillient so it will take alot to kill them (my cv bootsbroke away because the clamps rusted) but just keep the rubber clean and it will be fine. The other issue you get with tbar cranks is that the factory bump stop isnt relocated at all so you have the factory upward travel. This may cause the tires to rub the inner fender which isnt bad, just annoying. Fixes for this are a fabbed up new bump stop or adding a body lift to the torsion bar lift. Oh and also any time you mess with the t-bars, get an allignment done. Its entirely possible that the allignment will be fine but more than likely it will be a little off so it doesnt hurt to have it checked, plus its cheap to have done.

Now your other option for 31's is a body lift. No rubbing, rides like factory, no wear,but you have ground clearance issues still with the frame and unless you get gap covers, you will have a visable gap between the body and frame. Other down side is that after this you cant use the factory bumper for towing, the new brackets are there to move the bumper up and provide some protection but it doesnt have the same strength for tongue weight.A class III reciever will fix that though of course.

As for what i did and how it turned out, i started with the t-bars and added shackles running on BFG AT 31x10.5r15's. My ball joints were bad when i did that so they lasted all of a few weeks and then ireplaced them.A little while later my cv's let go so i replaced those. I was still getting rubbing issues when hitting big bumps so i went and got a body lift. Worked great and no rubbing at all. Got bored of the 31's and found a smokin deal on 33's so i went with that. Had to trim the fenders (still have to trim more) but other than that running great.


Anywho, hopefully that answers all your lifting a blazer to fit 31's questions. If you need more detail, pm myself, Jigg, or any of the other blazer forum members that have the torsion bar lifts and we are always happy to help.