I have read through countless threads on the Ex spring swap and just get more and more confused!

I have an 03' Excursion, 6.0 liter, 4wd, Eddie Bauer with 250k miles on it.

I picked up a set of springs (all 4) and would like to go with the swap (currently on vacation and would ideally like to get this done while I am here for two reasons. The first, I need the space in my rig going home and they are heavy and take up a ton of room where the dog needs to be and the second is that I can likely get a shop here to do it for considerably less than back home)

So here is what I picked up. Stock springs from a 03' F250 SRW, Crewcab, long bed with at 6.0.

Fronts appear to be "V" codes (2C34 ADB)
Rears appear to be "S" or "P" codes?? (3C34 CC) Any help on that would be great. They do have the overloads on them with a 1"? spacer as well.

I would like to see my Excursion get about 2"-3" of lift to have more clearance. I tow a 30ft 10,000 trailer with a load leveling hitch. It tows good but I would like more stability. Last week I put on Bilstein 5100's in the front including the steering stabilaizer shock and 4600's in the rear and this was a tremendous upgrade over the old stock shocks.

My goal is not to lift it too much as I use this to tow with. I would like better stability for towing and would also like to have it a little taller as I think they look good with about 3-4" of lift on 33's.

Can someone please help me identify the springs that I have and then give me instructions on how to get the lift that I am looking for and the correct level ride height front and rear. In particular what is going to be needed to get it done. I.e- Length of new u-bolts, rear block heights or if doing a "mod" what parts need to be pulled from what and placed where.

Sorry for the remedial post and any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

I don't have secret decoder ring that allows for the translating of the engineering numbers stamped into the springs to decode which codes they are. The absolute best way know that info is get it from the donor trucks door jamb sticker, do you have access to the truck?
Where are you, there may be someone from close by that could help you out with the job.

Welcome to the EX forum.

 

The fronts do appear to be V-codes and the rears don't matter as much because I think most of the SD's of that era came with 3000 lb springs in the rear. You will be VERY happy with this suspension upgrade. I did the exact same thing to mine a couple years ago and it's very worthwhile. Here is what you need to do:

Swap the front springs in as-is. Done.

The rear is a little trickier. You will need extended u-bolts. This added another day onto mine as I had to wait for them to be made and delivered to the shop (I paid to have mine done as well). You will be disassembling both spring packs. Take the Excursion spring pack apart and save the two longest leaves. Throw the rest out. Take the SD spring pack apart and remove the 1" spacer and overload leaf. Throw them out. Take the rest of the SD spring pack, add the two leaves from the Excursion springs to it, and you have a 2" lift spring for the rear so you can run the stock Excursion 2" blocks instead of the 4" superduty block.

Add a hellwig adjustable rear sway bar too. Also a very worthwhile upgrade, and that goes double if you tow heavy. You will probably want to take a look at the spring eye bushings too. Now is obviously the time to change them if they are showing any signs of cracking or drying out.

One more thing... I put Bilsteins on mine as well and I think the rears were long enough but I want to say that I got 2" lift shocks for the front.

 

Andy, what you describe above wont work, the longest EX leaf will have the spring eyes on the ends which will prevent its use in the trucks spring pack as it will already have a top leaf with spring eyes. I believe what you meant to say was take the two SHORTEST leaves from the factory EX spring pack (along with the slightly thicker EX between leaf spacer shims) and add them to the bottom of the 4 leaf pack from the truck, but keep the very thick truck bottom leaf on the bottom of the new stack.
And as Andy said, be sure to ditch the top overload leaves and their mounting blocks as they can damage the EXs rear AC lines if left on the spring pack. I'm a little of a waste not want not kind of guy, so I took those overload leaves and added them to my front X codes for a bit of additional lift when I did my spring swap.

 

You know... I wondered when I wrote that if someone would think that I actually meant to put two leafs in the same spring pack with eyes in them. I guess I got my answer.

 

Secrect decoder ring says engineering drawing number 3c34-5A975-cc is a P code spring.

 

I am at a shop now waiting to see what the damage is going to be on my wallet!

So with the "V" codes in the front and the "P" codes in the rear...do I still need to add additional extra leafs to balance out the difference between the stock 2" block and the 4" block that the F250 comes with? I want it to ride level.

Is is there anything else to consider or anything problematic? Drive line angle, hardware, etc?

 

I just read what you wrote and wanted to make sure the new guy who was asking on his first post here understood what he needed to do, since he was asking for guidance.
My statement about the two shortest EX leaves goes along with the "typical" rear spring mod that is popular here, did you actually use the two longest (non eyed) leaves from the EX pack on your modded rear springs?

I really need to eat more Crackerjacks and get me one of those rings........ What are the specs on P codes?

 

I don't have the specs on the P codes, did the donor truck have 4" blocks? And do have them now? Usually the F-350s got the taller blocks and the 3/4 tons has similar blocks to the EX 2"-ish ones. Super Duty trucks with similar wheelbases as the EX use the tapered rear 4" blocks with the taller end facing the rear of the rig.
The early pioneers of the modding of truck rear B codes went with the typical mod of the two shortest EX leaves and thicker EX shim/spacers to save folks the extra cost of the taller blocks to get back to a factory rake when going to V/B springs. At least that has been my understanding as explained here in the past.

 

I guess... although if someone is dumb enough to try that, they probably aren't smart enough to figure out how to get the springs off to begin with.

Now you've got me thinking. Maybe I did use the two shortest springs. I paid a shop to do it and gave them the instructions back in January of 2015, so my memory isn't going to be as good about it.

Google.

 

I have the actual blueprints. What spec do you want ?

 

The guy that I bought them from doesn't have the truck anymore. He removed the springs and lifted it at 30,000 miles and these have been in storage ever since. The truck they came off of was a 2003 F250 Crew cab, long bed.

 

I took it to a large truck repair place out here near my sister-in-laws place. They were going to start the work and then discovered that they couldn't remove the front bolts from the hangars because of the clearance for the bolts to come out. Not sure these guys really wanted to do the work so I told them to forget about it. Looks like these will be traveling home with me and I will have to sort it out on my own. The wife is going to be so happy about that. 😂

 

For whatever reason the code changed but it is the same rate(s) as what is lovingly referred by some as a B spring.

 

I'll make a note of it.

In other news, I will be in MI next week meeting with the new Bronco team. Pretty excited about that.