Lifting an '88-'98 Chevy Half-Ton

The Rough Country kit comes with everything you see here, plus a few other items that won't excite you in pictures, like vacuum hose extensions, for less than $1,000. Front and rear IFS crossmembers are included, along with kicker braces, and drop brackets for the upper control arms, differential, and for the torsion bar crossmember. Shocks come standard in the kit, and depending whether you do the 4- or 6-inch kits, you'll use a block or a block and an add-a-leaf to lift the rear. Instructions are included with labeled images that make it easy enough to do this install at home in your driveway if you have a good day's worth of time and are tech savvy enough to feel comfortable doing it yourself.

Start the installation by removing everything (suspension-wise) from the truck. Lift it in the air, loosen the torsion bars using a torsion key tool, remove the torsion bars,....

....A-arms, knuckles, CV shafts, loosen the steering links, and drop the differential after unhooking the vacuum and electrical lines going to it.

Once you have the factory suspension (and front differential) removed, add the beefy new steering link that Rough Country provides. This will attach to the steering box's pitman arm and the idler arm on the passenger side of the vehicle. Now is a good time to check that idler arm, as it's a part that is often worn out on older Chevys.

Next, put in the front subframe crossmember. It installs in place of the stock A-arms, and then the A-arms bolt into the subframe crossmember.

Add the drop brackets to the differential, after cutting off the factory frame diff bracket ear (detailed in Rough Country's directions).....

...... Once that's done, place the differential back up into the frame, but with the upper bolts only hand tight since you'll still be adding more attaching bolts from the diff into the rear subframe bracket.

Once the subframe drop crossmembers are on, you can reinstall the lower control arms.

Once the lower arms are on, you can work on getting the upper control arms dropped. First, you'll have to remove the necessary portions of original frame bracketry to make room for the upper control arm drop brackets.....

......Once you have that done, the drop brackets slip into the original upper control arm mounting points, and actually drop the control arm mounts.....

.....IFS kits on today's new trucks many times keep the upper control arm in the stock location and add a new, longer knuckle. Both lift methods are acceptable, but the drop bracket kits generally take a little more time to install.

Rough Country provides a steering link that attaches to the front subframe crossmember and joins to the drop steering assembly. This provides a third pivot point for the steering, making it much stronger.

In the rear, Rough Country provides a block for the 4-inch kit, or a block and an add-a-leaf for the 6-inch kit. The rear also uses the same Hydro 8000 shocks that the front end does. We painted the U-bolts black so they wouldn't stand out under the truck.