Front suspension

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Lowwhiteram02

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Sep 22, 2016
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Ram Year
2002
Engine
4.7
I did a 3 inch drop spring on the front and my tie rods are bowed up at an angle. I have bad bump steer and maxed out on my camber adjustment. What did everybody else do when they lowered the front of their 3rd gen rams? I talked of a couple people at Michigan metal works and they said I can use the camber cure uppers with my stock mounts. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
 

Bullitt5339

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Location
St Pauls, NC
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2004
Engine
3.7
Their camber cure uppers are super expensive and only fix one issue.

I bought the relocated upper control arm mounts for mine, but before that I just took a rotary tool with a cutting bit and notched the slots enough to get the alignment perfect. The camber control uppers also may give you the ability to align the truck correctly, but it doesn't fix the geometry problem that lowering creates, which is what is giving you the bumpsteer. The only way to fix the bumpsteer is to correct the geometry.

Getting the geometry perfect is pretty much impossible without major cutting/welding/reworking the entire suspension, but you can make it better. Upper control arm relocation brackets work wonders and will get the uppers back to parallel easily on a 3" lowered truck. Then you have to address the tie rod angle, which causes most of the bumpsteer problems. There are a few bumpsteer kits on the market, but when I was doing my research, it seems that they all had problems with durability on trucks that are actually driven a lot so I went another route:

I took my spindles and had them reverse reamed at a 4WD shop. This kind of work is common practice on Jeeps and other lifted trucks, so they've usually got the tools to accomplish the job. You can buy the reamer and do it yourself, but the reamer was over $75 everywhere I looked and they only charged me $100 to do it at the shop. They did require me to bring the spindles to them, they would not do it on the truck for insurance reasons. I then swapped the tie rod from the top of the spindle to the bottom, which brought the tie rod angle much closer to being parallel with the lower control arms and improved the bumpsteer to the point where it wasn't noticeable. When put on a bumpsteer gauge, it still has some but it doesn't try to yank the truck like it used to.

Then I found an awesome alignment shop that specialized in custom cars and gave them the specs that I wanted it aligned to. This is a lot of work and money, but it really made the truck drive like factory again. My next project is to extend the upper shock mount to give me some more travel while allowing me to buy an off the shelf shock designed for a lowered truck, even though I'm beyond the range that they offer.
 
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Lowwhiteram02

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2002
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4.7
I appreciate the input. Just had lca bushings pressed in yesterday. I have to bit to cut some of the top mounting holes out I might do that and wait to get the relocation mounts. What should I do about my sway bar links, they are wore out and to long.
 

usaf2006

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Hemi 5.7
I believe 2009 Ford expedition / Lincoln navigator sway bar links are used by lowered folk. Not sure how low you need to be to use them though.
 

Bullitt5339

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With 3" of spring drop, you need the sway bar end links. I used F150 endlinks on mine. I still need to have them shortened a hair more, but they helped a lot.
 
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Lowwhiteram02

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How much material should I grind out of the uca mounts? 1/4" should do the trick I'm thinking
 
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