This is why spacers are a bad idea. (And lots of cv axle innards pics)

I have noticed since moving to middle perch the front end is a little more skittery hitting rough patches at speed and on bigger bumps the shocks rebound too much. I actually don't know how to describe that second part other than after compression the shocks seem to bounce the front end up in the air more than with the stock perch setting.

I assume my observations would only be exagerrated on the top perch?

Hockster said:

Not firing at you but, where did you get the $340 cost from? Is that what you are saying its going to cost to do preventive maintenance on the front end?

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Don't forget to include the wear and tear on things like the tie rods, upper control arms, all the bushings, or how about the bent up and cracked spacers themselves? The problem with this is if it goes bad, its going to go VERY bad in a real hurry. You're not just going to snap an axle; you're going to tear out parts in the process while driving at speed...

Maybe I'm being dramatic, but honestly I feel lucky that discussions on this forum sparked me to go look, to seek an expert out to double check and confirm, and to have pulled them out before something really did go wrong.

---------- Post added at 01:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:41 PM ----------

vanilla_gorilla said:

BigJ, so speaking of ride quality, you have now driven your rig stock perch, middle, spacers, and now top perch. How does the top perch setting compare?

I'm on the middle and love it, maybe when i get some RPG UCAs i will go to top perch, but what is your impression?

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Just to be totally clear and up front, I have thousands of miles behind the wheel at stock, with spacers, and now at the top perch. I have only ridden in a couple Raptors with the middle perch. My Raptor has never been set to the middle.

Stock vs spacers was almost invisible to me. The only thing I noticed was an occasional clunk or bang at full droop. The pics in my 40k thread show where that was coming from.

My very brief experience with the middle perch left me feeling as if the machine was a stock, with the exception of what I would call 'fight'; it seemed to me that coming over a hump where the weight of the truck was up and off the suspension, and it starts to droop, that the front would 'fight' to hug the ground a bit longer than stock/spacers. This can lead to the feeling of recoil I guess you'd call it? It didn't bother me at all, and I actually thought it was an advantage since keeping traction as long as possible is typically a good thing. But I can understand why someone would maybe think the lower setting was preferable, since the front doesn't fight as hard and therefore you get that weightless feeling just a little bit longer.

As for the top perch... honestly I cannot say. The fight is there in a bigger way, but when we went top, we also installed RPG upper control arms with the 1.5" stainless bearings, RPG tie rods and we pulled the sway bar for the first time, and left it off. I seriously have a brand new truck now, and its not fair to point at the top perch and try to compare since so much other stuff changed at the same time. But more to come on all that in its own writeup soon

BigJ said:

Yep, if we're talking about the shock "cap", that's an easy fix. Just replace your cut ones with new ones from the dealership. Part number AL3Z-18A099-A and they run about $40ea (you'll need one per side).

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Thanks for the part number J.. I like Ironman went with the Daystar and trimmed those top bolts.

My spacer is coming off this week!

Man I'm glad, after I debated back and forth, to just do the perch adjustment instead of the spacers.

I read through the thread so excuse me if I missed it, but wouldn't it be the same with middle/top perch adjustments? Not to mention actually getting air in the truck? Not real experienced in that area so I could certainly be missing something...

Not sure what you're asking Spider. Can you ask it a different way?

Hate to say I told you so but.... I have been preaching the evils of spacers since day one. Glad you caught it before you had a serious failure. Expensive lesson but it could have been much worse. Glad you shared the photos so others can learn.

BigJ said:

Not sure what you're asking Spider. Can you ask it a different way?

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I think what he's trying to ask is wouldn't you have the same rubbing of parts wih the middle Or top perch as you did with the spacer.

My answer to that is no because with the perch mod all your doing is changing te spring rate of the shock so you still have the se clearance as for the spacers you actually moving the entire shock assembly down 2 inches and that's making the A arms and cv axles move down 2 inches at full drop and since it wasn't designed to do that it's throwing the angle of the front axles and upper A arms way off and making them contact and run each other.

Whoever knows more can explain better I'm semi knew to this whole thing as well so feel free to correct my errors ways haha

SilverBolt said:

Hate to say I told you so but.... I have been preaching the evils of spacers since day one. Glad you caught it before you had a serious failure. Expensive lesson but it could have been much worse. Glad you shared the photos so others can learn.

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Hey this aint the first time I've been wrong and it sure as hell won't be the last.

pat'sRAPTOR said:

I think what he's trying to ask is wouldn't you have the same rubbing of parts wih the middle Or top perch as you did with the spacer.

My answer to that is no because with the perch mod all your doing is changing te spring rate of the shock so you still have the se clearance as for the spacers you actually moving the entire shock assembly down 2 inches and that's making the A arms and cv axles move down 2 inches at full drop and since it wasn't designed to do that it's throwing the angle of the front axles and upper A arms way off and making them contact and run each other.

Whoever knows more can explain better I'm semi knew to this whole thing as well so feel free to correct my errors ways haha

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Ah gotcha. I'll let the far more knowledgeable folks on these forums answer that. All I can tell ya is to the best of my knowledge I no longer have any binding or contact points. That could be due to the RPG stuffs though, I'm not positive.