My lowering plan

[Svt40]

Nothing yet. I am thinking I might just suck it up and get the tires and wheels I want and not worry about clearance on the factory 20's.

 

[Svt40]

Well, I said screw it ordered the wheels I wanted. Apparently, they are still quite new to the market so not everyplace lists what they actually fit. I am also going with Toyo Proxes ST III 285/45R22 rather than the 305s. Tires will be here later this week. Wheels....no idea how long. Then we can get back to installing the lowering kit. Hopefully I remember my phone this time.

 

[Svt40]

I heard back from Belltech today and they said just keep the emails, warranty would not be affected by the modification to the spindles. It's a moot point now.

 

[CMil527]

Looking forward to pics!

 

[Rock Crawler]

I heard back from Belltech today and they said just keep the emails, warranty would not be affected by the modification to the spindles. It's a moot point now.

That‘s good to hear. I probably should have gone that route, but I doubt they would have felt the same way about boring out the hub hole.

 

[Svt40]

Even with boring out the hub hole are you sure the bolts would have still lined up?

 

[Rock Crawler]

Even with boring out the hub hole are you sure the bolts would have still lined up?

Technically, they should have because the bolt pattern is the same on all of the Ram trucks regardless of wheel size. But, if the bore job was not perfectly centered, they might not have lined up. I would most likely have also run into the issues you have as well. Not worth the risk to me.

 

[Svt40]

Here is a picture of the spindle mounted with the factory 20" wheel. You can fit a sheet of paper in between the two but not much else. The groove you see is where the inside of the wheel starts to rise up after the flat edge of the wheel.

 

[Rock Crawler]

Here is a picture of the spindle mounted with the factory 20" wheel. You can fit a sheet of paper in between the two but not much else. The groove you see is where the inside of the wheel starts to rise up after the flat edge of the wheel.

Crazy. So it’s made for 20” wheels, but won‘t work. Would work better with 22” wheels (more gap from spindle to wheel), but won’t fit hub. What the hell are these guys doing? It’s like they came up with an idea and released it without even testing to see if it works. This isn’t some fly by night company, it’s BELLTECH and they have been doing this since the early 80’s. Very disappointing.

 

[Svt40]

Well we started to install the kit on Monday morning. The lowering spindles went on without a hitch and fit great within the 22" wheels.

We got as far as putting on the upper control arm lowering brackets on the rear axle. Now this is after cutting all the required parts off the truck. The brackets do not fit properly. They should fit flush on the axle pad and the holes should line up with the slot.




The rest of the brackets fit properly. But with these two not fitting properly nothing else can be installed since they all tie together. The Z bracket that connects upper to lower I can only get either the bottom bolts in or the top bolt. Not all three.

Belltech has been as helpful as they can possibly be. They are sending me another pair of upper brackets. I fear they will fit the same. I think in the end I'm going to have to pull the kit off and weld the brackets we cut off back on and go back to the factory stance.

We'll find out tomorrow.

 

[cskindt]

That's a lot of work for you to test someone else's prototype.

I hope they're making it worth your time and effort.

 

[CMil527]

Hmm... in to see how this turns out!

 

[Rock Crawler]

Well we started to install the kit on Monday morning. The lowering spindles went on without a hitch and fit great within the 22" wheels.

We got as far as putting on the upper control arm lowering brackets on the rear axle. Now this is after cutting all the required parts off the truck. The brackets do not fit properly. They should fit flush on the axle pad and the holes should line up with the slot.

The rest of the brackets fit properly. But with these two not fitting properly nothing else can be installed since they all tie together. The Z bracket that connects upper to lower I can only get either the bottom bolts in or the top bolt. Not all three.

Belltech has been as helpful as they can possibly be. They are sending me another pair of upper brackets. I fear they will fit the same. I think in the end I'm going to have to pull the kit off and weld the brackets we cut off back on and go back to the factory stance.

We'll find out tomorrow.

Did you still have to cut anything off the spindles with the 22” wheels like you were having to do with the 20” wheels?

 

[Rock Crawler]

Well we started to install the kit on Monday morning. The lowering spindles went on without a hitch and fit great within the 22" wheels.

We got as far as putting on the upper control arm lowering brackets on the rear axle. Now this is after cutting all the required parts off the truck. The brackets do not fit properly. They should fit flush on the axle pad and the holes should line up with the slot.

The rest of the brackets fit properly. But with these two not fitting properly nothing else can be installed since they all tie together. The Z bracket that connects upper to lower I can only get either the bottom bolts in or the top bolt. Not all three.

Belltech has been as helpful as they can possibly be. They are sending me another pair of upper brackets. I fear they will fit the same. I think in the end I'm going to have to pull the kit off and weld the brackets we cut off back on and go back to the factory stance.

We'll find out tomorrow.

Did you try assembling everything with the nuts completely loosened? It looks like one or two of the lower nuts might be tightened down a little. On my IHC relocation brackets, I had to leave everything very loose for it all to go together. One of the brackets actually bent a little while tightening. But, that is the way it was supposed to happen according to the instructions. I‘m assuming these brackets relocate both upper and lower rear control arms?

 

[Rock Crawler]

And don’t forget, once everything is on, do not tighten any (front or rear) suspension parts bolts or nuts until it‘s all under full load of the truck. Otherwise, control arm bushings, among other bushings can be damaged.

 

[Svt40]

Did you still have to cut anything off the spindles with the 22” wheels like you were having to do with the 20” wheels?

Just the very bottom of the ball joint stud. The factory has very long studs in the ball joints for some reason.

 

[Svt40]

Did you try assembling everything with the nuts completely loosened? It looks like one or two of the lower nuts might be tightened down a little. On my IHC relocation brackets, I had to leave everything very loose for it all to go together. One of the brackets actually bent a little while tightening. But, that is the way it was supposed to happen according to the instructions. I‘m assuming these brackets relocate both upper and lower rear control arms?

We tightened them just for the photo. Even with all the bolts loose the upper brackets do not fit properly. Makes us wonder if Ram changed something on the 2021+ axle mounts, assuming Belltech was using a '19-'20 Ram for R&D.

I talked with the guy doing the install this morning and once the new parts arrive and fit the same, we have decided to grind down the offending parts to get the clearances needed on the new brackets so we can get the three bolts on the Z bracket lined up. Once those are lined up the trailing arms should fit fine. Then we just have to find a way to secure the upper relocation brackets after that.

The driver's side bracket is the worst one. We would have to cut part of the top mount tab off and drill a new hole into the axle flange to secure along with a spacer/shim so it sits flush.

The passenger side seems to need some slight trimming on the bottom outboard mount ear to clear the Z bracket and then a spacer/shim to secure to the axle. We might have to trim the OEM tab on the axle as well to get the bracket to roll far enough forward.

Hopefully today we can get it either done or back to factory. I hate driving our shop truck.

 

[MC6533]

I am very interested to see how this turns out as well. This is the kit that I had intentions of working with.
I was under the impression that the R&D had been done since it was a long wait for these parts. They usually have parts available as soon as the vehicles hit the street, but for some reason these 5th gen trucks took a while??

 

[Svt40]

A little update. The new parts arrived and were exactly the same as the kit parts.

We had actually begun to do a refund and return the kit when the guy installing it said, "Hey, lets try this". This was elongating the holes on the top part of the Z bracket. I had already ground the upper mounts to fit which changed the way things lined up. I conferred with BT about our plan and they said go for it.

So as of now the upper brackets are installed and sitting properly after a lot of grinding and drilling of new holes. The Z brackets now fit and all the bolts line up as they should.

Back to work on it.

 

[Svt40]

Well, we got the upper and lower control arms mounted up the shocks are in. Next was the trackbar. Of course, my truck being a unicorn, decided to have a trackbar bracket that is not even close fitting to what the kit provides. So that means the kit part is unusable. So adjustable track bar here I come. I ended up ordering a Spohn trackbar and it should be here Tuesday. For now, we installed the factory trackbar back in place.

Next came the sway bar. I have no idea what vehicles the instructions were meant for, but it was not a 5th Gen Ram 1500. The instructions said the re-use the original hardware for installation of the adjustable links. Well, the upper OEM bolts are tiny and rattle around in the bushing provided with the kit. The lower link has no hardware because it's similar to a ball joint in construction. For the lower link I had to buy a pair 12mmx90mm bolts. The upper will have to either have the anchor nut cut off or drilled and tapped for a larger bolt to fit the kit parts.

We finally got her on her own feet last night and all the control arms and brackets torqued down. Surprisingly the rear axle with the factory trackbar only moved to the passenger side about 1.5 inches.
We'll pull it out and run up and down the parking lot a few times to settle the suspension and then pull it back up onto a different rack and re-check all the hardware. Then up on the alignment rack to check it out (toe is now out).