I'm in the process to cummins swapping an 01 1500 2wd. I've been working on it on and off most of the year. Installed the metal sleeves for caltracs and while I was at it I installed 2" lowering shackles to start and see where the truck sat. Yesterday I was finally able to put the bed on and found the truck to be sitting up very high in the rear. (It's still has the factory 1500 coils up front so I know it's very nose heavy) But I felt the rear was still very high. I went through pictures on my phone and found one from when I bought the truck and going by the line on the inside of the wheel well, it looks to be sitting same, if not a little higher than it did before. Also the caltracs are coming up a little short, I didn't do any shims in the rear yet for the pinion angle because I was trying to figure out ride height first but the rear does seem tilted more than I expected, any idea on where I could have gone wrong?

 

It doesn't look like your shackles made much difference at all..... How did they compare to the stock units??

 

Lowering shackles were definitely a few inches longer and I’m using the bolt hole for the most drop. The fact that the caltracs for this truck are coming up short is really making me think I did something wrong, but don’t know what it could be. The rear is leaning a little pinion down because the ubolts aren’t even, I expected a little of that without shims but seems excessive. I couldn’t get a good angle pic to show that.

 

Could you post pictures of the shackles themselves? The axle angle does not look correct at all, what kit did you use, instructions?

 

I’ll try and get more pics when I get home if it’s still light out. Shackles are belltech 6400

 

You're fully weighted and the weight is the same before and after?

Shackles give about 1/2, thus 3" longer is 1.5" drop.

It's also definitely gonna roll the pinion down so you'll need correction, and as that occurs the traction bars will pivot closer to the front spring eye.

Basically, everything adds up EXCEPT why you didn't seem to get any drop in ride height.

Honestly once that is resolved I'd measure angles and cut and weld the spring perches as needed. Typically you allow ~2 degrees for spring wrap under power but with those traction bars you may not see much wrap.

 

Wasn’t able to make it home in the light yesterday but I’ll try today.

as far as pinion angle I was trying to figure out where it sat with the shackles before I corrected it in case it was going lower so I only had to do them once.
I checked the angles with an app on my phone, I know rough numbers but I wasn’t too far off trans was showing -3.6 and pinion was about -1.7