This actually is a 3 part question

1. What is the best hight to go on a lift kit?

2. What is better Body or Suspension?

3. Where's the cheapest place to purchase on?

Thanks,

 

Pends.

1. How big are the tires you want to run? Do you want to cut it?

2. Are you going v-8 or staying with the 2.9 or 4.0?

3. Pends on what you decide above and which company you decide to go with.

Get those lock outs on yet? Clint (74 Bronco) has a line on a guy who is a James Duff dealer. He gets us pretty good deals on Duff stuff. Duff is working on a new flexy 6" lift. BDS has a low cost lift kit but is a little stiff. It uses a short aal and blocks in the rear. Skyjacker has a 6" with longer radius arms. The cross member in this kit is perfect if you want to put an early bronco 44 solid front axle under the front. They are the only one I know of that make a 6" rear leaf pack. It is pretty stiff though. Only has 3 main leafs.

Now some say to make your rear leaf pack out of junk yard springs and use the Chebby shackles to get the rear lifted. Then try to get brackets for the front used somewhere and Jeep coils flex better in the front.

When are we going to Tuttle to wheel?

 

I just lifted my 85 BII, After alot of searching around I decieded to go with a 4" superlift (Super runner option), I added some 32" tires but could have easly gone with 33's.

I'm very happy with how it turned out, looks and handles great. I think a suspension lift is definatly the way to go, but if cost is the main concern then a body lift will do.

As far as how high, depends on what your going to be driving in/on, if your serious about the off-road/rock crawl, then higher is better, if your doing alot of on road driving around town 4" is plenty to give you the look and still have a reasonable amount of stability, remember the BII is the most dangerous truck on the road when it comes to rollovers (check the stats). With that in mind I'd definatly stay away from stacking lifts, body AND suspension. I personally feel it is a really dangerous combination on these trucks.

To do it right, a 4" suspention lift will cost you about $1,200- $1,700.00 depending on the brand and wheither you replace the rear leafs or go with blocks. If you plan on installing it yourself, be ready for a good couple of days of cussing and head scrathing if you've never done it before. Most Off-road shops will install one for about $800.00 and a good shop will gaurantee it's work.

P.S. I've read that anything less than a 4' suspention lift will also require a buch of extra fooling around to get the alignment right.

 

Thanks for the input guys maybe i can get a few more inputs for certainy

As for tuttle the weather hasnt been the ideal weather to change those out. (hopefully not to long from now)

 

body lifts are cheap but remember you get what you pay for, Superlifts are good so are James Duff you can pretty much count on at least $1200 for lift, shocks, brakelines, pitman arm, rims and tires, thats all before installation if you arent going to do it yourself.
Good Luck

 

A good point has been brought up. Body lifts had a bad rep mostly due to there use on older trucks with worn out suspensions and poor instalation. Body lifts are great to make room for v-8 swaps, transmission and t-case swaps. If you look at Superlift's max tire size chart you will see they list tire sizes for combo body and suspension lifts. Body lifts work great in combination with a performance suspension system. They can even reduce drive shaft angle and other problems that would occur if you used a suspension lift alone. An example would be a 2" body lift with a 4" suspension lift would be easier on the rear driveshaft than a 6" suspension lift. And if you need 9" of lift, then a 6" suspension and 3" body lift. However the cost to properly install a body lift can be higher than the cost to move up to larger suspension lift. Just check out the cost of new body mount peices for a BII. But if you need the body lift to clear other things just make sure your suspension is in good shape and properly install the lift. One thing I have noticed with the BII body lifts is that the 2" works very well. The 3" has some steerring shaft bind.

Again it all depends on what you want to do. Do you want to Baja or stadium race? Do you want to mud bogg? If so what class? Do you want to rock crawl? Will it be a trailer queen? Is it a daily driver? Do you want to do trails? If so will it be driven to the trails and back? Will it be driven on the street only? Do you want to do a v-8 or solid axle conversion? What size tires do you want to run?

 

A good body lift should come complete with the steering linkage for extensions, doesn't always happen but invest a little more, and you'll get a little more. The way I'm going with mine is 4" suspension (in the mail to my house!!!), and a 3" body, then I'm going to put on 33"ers with 15x10" wheels. Figured it would give it a big stout look to it. Then again, I don't go offroad a lot, just whenever the friends decide we want to do a little offroad and skip school lol. Maybe once a month, and we don't get into anything serious, so mine is mainly for looks, but will be able to handle a little more. I would recommend susp. over body lift, but thats just my opinion. You may find that the body lift is cheaper, and does lift the vehicle, but it doesn't give you off-road attitude, because you will still have stock springs, and shocks. With the susp. lift, you upgrade to more sturdy springs.

But for you're questions, I believe about 6" overall looks good, and gives you more functionality, but be careful because once lifted, they are a little tipsy. I believe susp is over all better, but more expensive, but you can combine a 3" body w/ 3" susp. and it's not that expensive. And best place to get one is probably James Duff, or Skyjacker, for the susp. lifts, but those are pretty expensive. Personally I'm going with Tough Country, and gonna give it a try. I've heard both good and bad things about them, so I figured I'd give it a try anyways, but I am upgrading to Rancho shocks, and steering stabalizer.

 

Thanks to everyone who answered back I will take in to consideration what you all said and post this in other forums and hopefully get some more replys that will reflect what you all said and take the average of which is better and what to get.

Thanks again