me and my dad recently purchased a 74 ford pickup. we are planning on redo the whole truck. we want to lower it. we plan on lowering in 5 inches in the front and 7 in the back with 18 inch wheels and 20s in the back. would it be easier to bag it or just get lowering arms and all that stuff and avoid the bags?

 

I am not an expert on lowering, if you do a search you can find some information on this as it has been brought up before. 5 and 7 is quite a bit.

 

that is quite a drop. i lowered one a long time ago 2 in front and 3 in rear. i had to buy dropped i beams. they cost about 500 dollars a pair.

 

i've been looking to lower my '79 f100 and here is what i've found. LMC trucks offers a 2in/4in drop that has coil springs and leaf springs. also, DJM suspensions has 3in/4in drop that has drop i-beams front and hangers and shackles rear. the cheapest route would be a combination of LMC's coil springs and DJM's hangers and shackles. a bagged system would require a lot of fabrication from what i've read. what your planning on sounds like a big drop to me. check out the online store here for parts and search the threads for other useful info.

 

here is some info to check out.
WWW.STREETRODENGINEERING.COM they offer an ifs kit for your truck that will give you the ultimate drop and can also use bags as well the other is
WWW.hotrodsuperstore.com/fatman.html

Both offer kits for 73-79 ford trucks and will both require WORK.
I have found that dropped I-Beams will only give a small amount of drop and
be careful with cutting front springs since this will effect the alignment of the front end.

The back kit can be found in ads in TRUCKIN magazine
flipping the rear axle and C-notching the frame wil give a lot of drop.
You may want to consider keeping the rims and tires all one size just simply
for rotating purposes, and also just in case you would have a flat, better than packing 2 different size spares.

 

although they themselves will not give you the drop you want, i think that bags would be cool cause while driveing you could raise it up where alignment is correct and all

 

we found out that lmc trucks makes a custom 5 and 7 inch drop kit. it will put the truck about 4 to 5 inches off the ground. which is what were looking for. if we are to bag it we are worried about puncturing a hole in the bag itself and then being stuck somewhere with a hole in the bag. if we just lower it with the ibeams and the kit it wont be that big of a hassel hopefully. we just bought the paint for it. its the copperhead pearl from the trucks tv show they used. its one sharp color in person.

 

I've had a lowrider and I say go with the air bags! It will ride so much better and I wouldn't worry about puncturing them they are pretty heavy duty. Plus then you can raise and lower it if you want. Otherwise you may end up getting hung up some place you didn't expect (carwash bay, been there!) I would also go with the same size rims all around especially if you want the truck to sit level. If you wanted the back end up a little then maybe go with the bigger ones but looks better if truck is level. That is one sweet color too by the way.

Matt

 

Never heard of that 5/7 drop from lmc whats the part numbers and price? good luck on the drop, hope you get what you are looking for. let us know how it turned out. i'm looking forward to seeing some pictures.