98 blazer zr2 cv angles

Wondering if these cv angles are very bad, it doesn't click, grind, or anything

Have you got the torsion bars cranked full? Is there any droop left? If there is, you could be in trouble dropping the tire into a hole. If there isn't, you have effectively lost half your front suspension.

It may not be making any noise but if the static angle at ride height exceeds the manufacturer's specifications (the engineering specs, not GM's specs) they could be subject to accelerated wear.

They were cranked when I got them.. MAXED and I got a key lift and the keys are barely off the little blocks the bolt threads into... Aka not cranked at all, I've been drivin it for maybe a month or two and yea, pretty much no front suspension when you jack the front end up it droops like a inch.. LOL, low tire pressure

I just didn't want the axles to wear out in like a couple months.

Looks a little steep to me

Like I've seen it worse on other trucks but..

Could you use some longer ones from a 3/4 ton truck? Even a half ton truck may have longer axles. I'm not sure if that would work but the 3/4 ton trucks have to be longer i'd think. You may could find some pretty cheap from a junk yard.

It's not the length at this point, but only the angle. The angle would change with longer axles they would only push into the joint further

cumminsbayou wrote:

Could you use some longer ones from a 3/4 ton truck? Even a half ton truck may have longer axles. I'm not sure if that would work but the 3/4 ton trucks have to be longer i'd think. You may could find some pretty cheap from a junk yard.

Wouldn't work. The differential is in a fixed position, as are the hubs. Distance from "A" to "B" will remain unchanged, and cannot BE changed unless the suspension were radically reworked for a much wider track. So as it sits, the angle is the angle, and indeed the issue.

What COULD work to reduce the angle, (if it were at all practical for the application) would be to LOWER the differential.

yea doc, thats the way your supose to lift these front ends. but the lowest price i could find for a 3 inch lift for this truck was around $450 and yes, a what i should have done. i chose the $70 keys becuse it acheived the same lift but was almost $400 cheaper lol, i wonder if i could fabricate something small to drop the diff down just an inch or so to reduce the angle

If you are gonna put longer cv shafts on it you are gonna have to put longer a arms on it

And it still wouldn't change the angle

This is why Im a solid axle guy lol. They make dropdown axle brakets as far as I know

Yea like I was telling doc, it's like $450 I think it got the drop bracket, and new upper arms I think im going to look into it soon though

GenevaCustoms wrote:

the lowest price i could find for a 3 inch lift for this truck was around $450 ... i chose the $70 keys becuse it acheived the same lift but was almost $400 cheaper

Another case of getting what you've paid for. Kind of like the $20 "performance chips" you see on evilbay. There is no way a simple little thing like that is actually going to do anything for you. There's a lot that goes into engineering a suspension system. Please note the use of the word "system", it's very much like a jigsaw puzzle. Do something that affects one piece of the puzzle, and all the other pieces will be affected. So, when people started figuring out that cranking up the preload on a torsion bar netted a bit of lift, they turned a blind eye to other effected parts of the system. Like increasing the spring rate, making for a stiffer ride, which is totally undesirable on an offroader. Or the damping rate of the shock absorber, which is no longer tuned to the spring rate. Or the nearly complete loss of droop or downtravel, which can actually be downright dangerous on a street-driven vehicle. Or (as you've discovered) questionable CV angles.

Be aware that I'm not lecturing anybody here, including yourself. Just illustrating things for newer wrenches that may come along and read this.

Yea people reading this in the future... Don't get key lifts! Drop that diff the right way!