G'day.

This is something I have been wanting to do for ages. I want to do a fairly basic lift on my van. Not to the point of dropping the front bar etc.

What I want to do is just raise it a little. I'm not overly worried about lifting the back. That's childs play. Especially because my van spent most of its life as an auto. So it has long axles. A royal PITA to attach and remove though. I need to jack the van up and have the back wheels dangling. This gives me barely enough clearance to unhook the axles and CVs from the top of the transmission. Anyhow yeah, just adjusting the torsion bars on the back is easy as.

The front is my concern. I have been hunting around for ages and it is hard to find what I have to do. Heaps on lowering, not much on lifting.

From what I have seen reinforcing the front shocker towers somehow is a good idea if it is going offroad.

How do I lift the front a bit? I think my front torsions are a little bit on the squishy side. Besides sitting a shade low it dips down enough to scrape gutters with the bullbar when I'm in the car. No, I'm not the size of a small car.
Does this make it a candidate for coilovers or something? I just want to know how I can do a non-extreme lift to the front.

Thanks.

Campers are prone to having some broken torsion bar leaves. Used to be able to get them new, need to check if they are still available, maybe Vintage? That will get the front back to factory height.

some good information here:-

http://www.bus-boys.com/bbsusp.htm 

Let's hope there are some front bars still around, eh?

Rob, are you talking about the adjustable spring plates for the rear? The back isn't as much of a concern. The front sits low with any weight in the van.

Tristan i was referring to this

http://www.bus-boys.com/instruct-beam-pg1.htm 

how to install their front beam adjusters...i wouldn't mind going that way

but as above...if you have broken torsion leaves that needs to be corrected first

Rebuild the front end first. Torsion leaves, bushes cente pin etc. Add adjusters and get them set so you can raise the front end up a little and get it to match whatever you raise the rear to. shock towers are pretty strong and never seen one break even on buses etc with monster lifts doing crazy stuff.

Cheers Rob. I didn't find that link first time through. I'm going to give it a proper read tomorrow. It's blurriness is a bit too much for me right now.Unless it's just my eyes.

That's something I have been curious about. The front adjusters seem to allow a lot of drop and not much lift. It that just because the beams are already about as high as they can go, or just due to the position of the adjustors?

It's how the adjusters are installed.

Sweet. So they can be set up more for adjustable lift. Nice to know. About 50/50 would be nice.

As it is I agree the front suspension needs work. Besides the weakness, there's plenty of clotted grease everywhere it can ooze out. Even the center lock bolt things.