I have a 2005 ram qc 4x4 1500, i want to put a leveling kit on it, but i dont really have time to do alot of reasearch right now. I was wondering what the pros and CONS are? Also I have seen that most kits can be bought for under 250$, but i was wondering what else would be involved or needed other then the kit? Also does anyone know where in the youngstown/Akron/cleveland areas i could have this installed? my truck is basically stock right now but i want to upgrade it with a little better look....


Also are there any real advantages to adding a performance chip? If so how hard are they to install? Are they as simple as they claim to be?


Thanks guys!!!

 

I cant speak on the leveling kit since you have a 4wd but I do have a SC3815 and I can tell you there are many benefits from it. You can adjust and change many things. You can reset and extract PCM codes if you ever need to. You can move up the governor and rev limiter, adjust shift points, monitor many areas of the engine and of course what most people do with it is ''tune'' it for what octane they use most.

 

If you have tortion bars the keys are only 99.00 at rough country. and install is not that difficult. dont have a clue how much to have it installed but would guess 100-150 dollars. If you have coil springs I ain't real sure.....

 

Pro's are it makes the truck look AWESOME!!! It rides like a truck!! and it makes you feel bigger than you were already. Cons, well I haven't found any yet!!!!

 

lazzy newbie... we have a FAQ section that will answear are your questions look in it!!!!

 

I have an '07 QC 1500 4x4 and last weekend I installed a Rough Country leveling kit that came with 2.5" front strut tower extensions, rear 1.5" blocks, new u-bolts and shocks for the rear. The entire kit cost about $200. The front install was a PITA, not so much from the standpoint of getting things apart, but once the spacer was bolted on to the strut tower it's difficult to get the upper ball joint and sway bar bolted back together... adding a good 2" between the upper control arm and the steering knuckle makes for a tough reach, same thing with the sway bar. I ended up using a big c-clamp to pull the control arm and the knuckle close enough together to get the bolt back on the ball joint, and I had to shave a little rubber off the top isolator on the sway bar to get enough threads to show to start the nut. Other than that, not a big deal. The rear blocks were a piece of cake too.

As far as chips, there's lots of threads on here about the pro's and con's of the various chips. I have an Edge Evolution programmer which is apparently limited to the '07 Hemi right now so I can't offer much advice on that. I do the programmers (there's a bunch of them out there) don't really install anything, they just overwrite the program on your PCM and can easily be returned to stock when you take your truck in for service.

Good luck!

 

05 4x4 has a torsion bar setup I think. The cons are the same between either a torsion bar front, or a strut front setup:

CV angles are greater. People argue this all the time, because when the truck is sitting in the driveway, although the angles are greater, there not TOO great to cause damage. What people don't realize is that when you are at max articulation, this is where the cv joints over angle. Since you lower your strut with a spacer, that allows the strut to over extend when its fully uncompressed (because its displaced lower, but the rest of the components are not), and puts cv joints and balljoints out of range. You should expect shorter life out of the cvs.

Same thing goes with balljoint angles. I know that personally my upper control arm, with a 2" leveling kit, rests on the coil spring of my strut under full suspension articulation, and in result the ball joint becomes a limiter, and its maxed out as well. This will definately shorten the ball joints life under rough terrain, period.

Everything usually looks "fine" with leveling kits when the truck is sitting at its normal ride hieght, on the road or in the driveway, its under full articulation that leveling kits cause some wear.

You cant make a strut longer, or put more space between the control arms without changing there angles. The proper way to fix this is with new control arms, and thats pretty much a full lift kit.


That being said,

I havnt had any problems with my leveling kit, but for just 2", I probablly wouldnt bother doing one again.