I've been getting more and more questions recently about my cantilever set up on the rear, so I thought I'd make a thread with some pics and info.
I'm slowly turning my truck into a desert worthy rig, but want to have that sleeper look, and to use my bed 100% since it's a truck after all. I'm pretty good friends with Brandon @ BTF Fabrication, and through shooting the shit with him about what I want to do with my truck, we decided to develop a cantilever kit. Dixon Bros had just released their bolt on kit, but I wasn't enthused about forking over $1500 for the kit, and still needing shocks. I'm not going to post prices, but let's just say that if you were to get the same that I have, it could easily be done for less than the price of the Dixon Bros kit. This kit is also fully bolt on, but requires cutting out the stock spare tire carrier and relocating the spare, just like the Dixon kit.
For those of you that don't know what cantilever is, it is a method of mounting the shocks and using a pivoting lever to achieve the same goals as mounting shocks through holes in the bed using a bed cage. With the 2.5x10" stroke shock I have, I'm getting over 1.5" of suspension travel for every 1" of shock stroke. Coupled with a set of Deaver leaf springs, and some 2" drop hangers and 6" shackles a friend and I designed in Solidworks when I was still a Mechanical Engineering major at Cal Poly, I have a rear suspension set up that can handle the big bumps, but won't kill me on the streets.
In the pictures below you can see the kit installed on my truck at full droop. The brake line looks rigged on there because I did an 8.8 swap at the same time and due to complications with tools breaking and the RuffStuff 8.8 swap kit having holes too small for the center pin of my Deavers (with no drill bit big enough to resize), it being 11PM and needing to pack for a week long trip to Yosemite the next day, I rushed. It's been fixed, looks better, and works perfectly. I have more pictures, but photobucket is down at the moment and I'm only allowed to upload 5 pictures per post.
Sorry this has been so wordy, here are pictures.
2.5x10" remote reservoir FOA smooth bodies
Deaver F23 pack (similar to F31, but with a longer main leaf)
Shackles and Hangers
Droop (I can get more, but this is with the shackle and hangers in the stock location)
I'm slowly turning my truck into a desert worthy rig, but want to have that sleeper look, and to use my bed 100% since it's a truck after all. I'm pretty good friends with Brandon @ BTF Fabrication, and through shooting the shit with him about what I want to do with my truck, we decided to develop a cantilever kit. Dixon Bros had just released their bolt on kit, but I wasn't enthused about forking over $1500 for the kit, and still needing shocks. I'm not going to post prices, but let's just say that if you were to get the same that I have, it could easily be done for less than the price of the Dixon Bros kit. This kit is also fully bolt on, but requires cutting out the stock spare tire carrier and relocating the spare, just like the Dixon kit.
For those of you that don't know what cantilever is, it is a method of mounting the shocks and using a pivoting lever to achieve the same goals as mounting shocks through holes in the bed using a bed cage. With the 2.5x10" stroke shock I have, I'm getting over 1.5" of suspension travel for every 1" of shock stroke. Coupled with a set of Deaver leaf springs, and some 2" drop hangers and 6" shackles a friend and I designed in Solidworks when I was still a Mechanical Engineering major at Cal Poly, I have a rear suspension set up that can handle the big bumps, but won't kill me on the streets.
In the pictures below you can see the kit installed on my truck at full droop. The brake line looks rigged on there because I did an 8.8 swap at the same time and due to complications with tools breaking and the RuffStuff 8.8 swap kit having holes too small for the center pin of my Deavers (with no drill bit big enough to resize), it being 11PM and needing to pack for a week long trip to Yosemite the next day, I rushed. It's been fixed, looks better, and works perfectly. I have more pictures, but photobucket is down at the moment and I'm only allowed to upload 5 pictures per post.
Sorry this has been so wordy, here are pictures.
2.5x10" remote reservoir FOA smooth bodies
Deaver F23 pack (similar to F31, but with a longer main leaf)
Shackles and Hangers
Droop (I can get more, but this is with the shackle and hangers in the stock location)
