Ive been told that by turning the Torsion bars, some people recommend longer shocks, any truth to this? Anyone here actually turned their torsion bars? I want to replace my shocks anyways, [Possibly RS9000X?, I was told by a performance shop that these things were absoulate garbage though, any truth to this?] I like the adjustibility feature, so I dont know I was told they suck...

 

I don't think that you would need longer shocks. Ie would just make your ride harder by not allowing the shocks to travel their full distance. Recently I have been asking around b/c I have been wanting to raie/lower mine, but i am told that it will affect the camber opf your wheels and cause them to wear prematurely.

 

I had a buddy that tighten the torsion bars on his 96 Z71 and put add-a-leafs in the rear. He got it realigned and everything but after about a year and a half the front suspension got screwed up beyond belief. The front tires look like this: / \ He had no choice but to take it to a shop and get it fixed, costing him about a grand. I don't the specifics about what they had to fix, sorry. Another buddy of mine had a 94 chevy and did the same thing. His truck didn't get as bad as my other friend, but he had to buy a new pitman arm every couple months because it just got torn up. I know these were Chevys, but since trucks generally have the same suspension setup, we can apply this to our Dodges. So in my opinion, it's HIGHLY unrecommended. Just save your cash and get a leveling kit, body lift, or suspension lift.
And yes, I have some stupid friends.

 

After cranking my torsion bars I had to get longer shocks. My stock shocks would over extend on every bump in the road.
I have the cheapo Rancho 5000 shocks and like them much better than the oem shocks.

 

Just so you know, all a leveling kit does on a 3rd gen 4X4 is re-index the torsion key on the end of the bar. It makes it so that the bolt don't have as many threads sticking through the key to lift the front of the truck. It will not change the overall effect of turning the bars. The suspension geometry (shaft/cv joint angles) will still be beyond what is reccomended by Dodge.

 

For those of you that are interested, truxxx.com has a torsion key leveling ket that comes with a lower A arm shock replacement attachment. It bolts to the stock location so you can continue to use the stock shocks. The important thing to do is to make sure you get an alignment after cranking your torsion bar. The kit from truxxx.com comes with the alignment specs you just give to whoever is doing the alignment.

The only way to level a Dodge Ram 1500 without doing a full suspension lift is the torsion key approach since the Dodge has IFS that doesn't use coil springs.

As far as how it affects the Dodge setup, there are a ton of guys doing it over at DodgeTalk.com. It's another forum just like this one. FWIW.