buy a lift kit or piece together?

[USMCtruckGUY1907]

Hey everyone, Im having trouble deciding if I want to buy a 4" Superlift suspension lift (the only one I currently know of still being made for 98's), or piecing together something. If anybody knows of a cheap way to get 3-4" out of the front end, or another lift kit of good quality, please let me know! Thanks!

-98 Ranger 4x4, 4.0, Torsion bar crank.

 

[JohnnyO]

You can't really piece anything together because that won't solve the problem of lowering the hub location. The Superlift kit includes new knuckles to do this, which is why it costs as much as it does. See, you lower the diff and crossmember and lower control arms with drop brackets but that doesn't solve the problem of how you lower the upper control arms. The discontinued Trailmaster kit used upper ball joint spacers, the Superlift kit uses dropped knuckles. The Trailmaster kit was slightly cheaper, if you're lucky you may still find one, but IMHO the loss in strength vs. Superlift wasn't worth the little bit of savings (it wasn't much). If you don't want to drop the coin for a Superlift kit then think about getting a body lift instead.

The only other late-model kit is Dixon Brothers which costs a helluva lot more than Superlift.