Yes, you can do the lift with common tools- jack stands, jack, sockets (my dad had a 3/4" drive set that came in handy on the track bar), air tools are nice but not neccessry. I did mine with the help of my 65 yr old dad and I had not done one before. Took us a full day. My kit was not exactly like the link I sent you but Cary put together the package. The blocks I used in the rear were 6" instead of 5". I went with dual shocks in the front - you could stick with single if you want but the duals would help with the offroading. I also went with a dual FOX steering stabilizer. If you do this lift you could get driveline vibration. Some do and some don't. Mine had a CV joint drive shaft (I do not think they all have this) and it was easy to fix by putting in a 8 degree shim. I welded the shim to the bottom of the lift block. I also have done some performance mods and was getting minor axle wrap on full throttle. The axle wrap was worse with a 10000lb trailer so I added OUO traction bars - solved the problem. I also opted to re-gear to 4:30 as I tow in the mountains. We bought ours with 32k miles and wanted to set it up for our specific use. We love it and plan to keep it a long time.

 

ya i can understand how 6 inches of lift will become too much of an angle for the u-joints to handle without needing an angled shim to bring the axle closer to alignment. what is axle wrap? the dual fox steering stabilizer is the front shocks? i would definitely go dual shocks these things are tanks and i plan on adding a 200 pound bumper guard to it as well as many more modifications. i dont plan on doing any towing for a long time especially since i first need to buy one of these then save up again for all my mods then save up for toys but i am tired a driving a generic vehicle i plan on making my vehicle my way!
what was the normal gear ratio? i know that larger tires mess with your gearing and is very hard on your transmission is that why you changed your gear or did you do it for the torque?

 

Axle wrap is when the axle rotates up under the vehicle on hard acceleration. I am over 800ft/lbs of torque and with the large blocks it wants to twist the axle underneath which in turn causes extreme angles and binding on the driveline. On mine it was very minor except when I had 10000lbs in tow. Here is a video showing axle wrap Ladder Bars - YouTube

For dual front shocks I have the Bilsteins with the ICON dual shock bracket. The Ex has a single steering stabilizer which I changed to a dual. The steering stabilizer helps to keep the tires from shaking back and forth.

I did the gear swap from 3.73 to 4.30 to help prolong the transmissions life - mainly because of towing in the mountains. I was getting a lot of gear hunting while towing. I am towing up and over Stevens pass often with 60mph speed limit and it was wanting to drop into 3rd and unlock the transmission. I did not like pulling that much weight up the pass with the transmission unlocked. I thought about just having it reprogrammed to lock in 3rd. Now it pulls the same pass locked in 4th gear and can pull lesser grades locked in 5th. With the stock gears it also felt like it was working harder than it should to get up to speed. If I were not towing I would have probably left it alone. If you are driving at speeds above 65mph the mpg starts to drop off with this gearing but it is better towing and in town. Towing performance is outstanding. I have not hit a pass yet that it would not tow 10000lbs at the speed limit. Most just run the stock gearing with 35's.