CST Lift Kits on a 2002 Chevy Duramax - Back For More

10.The new drop bracket is taller to compensate for the extra lift, without changing the steering geometry. The stock truck has a damper that is used on both the 7-inch kit and the 11-inch kit. Each kit comes with a new damper valved to help with larger tires.

11.With the suspension, antisway bar, lateral impact bars, and steering disconnected, we dropped the old bracket to make room for the new bracket that adds 9 of the 11 inches of lift.

12.The 9-inch bracket doesn't move the antisway bar down. You mount the sway bar in its stock location; it's just flipped over and remounted with the CST-provided sway bar links.

13.A huge bag of bolts was provided with the kit. Initially, we thought we were going to spend the next hour or so sorting bolts. One of the things that makes this kit installer friendly is the bolts are broken down into smaller bags and marked with a number. The instructions supplied with the kit have an index of what is in each bolt bag and what those specific fasteners are for.

14.We didn't want to remove the front axle completely, so Andy Measser skipped a step and installed our new drop bracket.

15.We then padded our new drop bracket, so we didn't scratch the high-sheen powdercoat on our new kit. Afterward, we disconnected the front differential and carefully lowered it into the new drop bracket.

16.With a bolt in the new drop bracket holding the front diff mount, you can see how much longer the upper diff mount needs to be.

17.No, the old upper diff mount bar is not bent. It is designed to bend around the differential. The taller kit doesn't need to do that because the lift is high enough to pass right over the diff with no interference.

18.Installation of the steering drop bracket went before the upper diff mount to make room for fitting the steering damper. Except for the steering damper and the ball joints, we left most of the bolts loose at this time.

19.Afterward, the shock hoop and front arm drop bracket were installed.

20.The upper A-arms were then put in place on the drop bracket with the stock fasteners and alignment cams.

21.The lower A-arm, knuckle with hub assembly, and driveshaft were all bolted to the new drop bracket and fixed to the upper A-arm. The tie rod ends were also cleaned and fitted to the steering drop bracket.

22.From there, all the fasteners were placed, dabbed with Loctite, and tightened up.

23.The old drop bracket for the torsion bars was removed and the new torsion bar drop brackets were attached to the frame via freshly drilled holes. This allowed us to put spring tension back into the A-arms through CST's Plus-2 torsion keys and sit the truck on its new rolling stock.

24.Our new Fox piggyback shocks were bolted up with the supplied bolts and misalignment shims. Now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

25.We bolted up the stock plastic and aluminum skidplates to finish off the front end. These were probably the only nine bolts that didn't receive a dab of thread-lock, but after writing this, we may go back and fix that.

26.The CST 6- to 8-inch lift supplies a taller more progressive leaf spring for a softer ride than our standard 1- or 3/4-ton truck leaf. The ride is excellent, but trailer tongue weight has a more dramatic effect on the soft springs. For this, we added airbags, which we will remove for the lift. We will cover how we fit them back and correct our receiver height for the new lift in a seperate story.

27.Once again, the big jackstands were put to use, holding up the heavy frame. Charles Evenson removed the tires to start the back half of our driveway install.

28.Both lift systems from CST provide a progressive leaf spring. The old spring was removed to make way for the taller spring.

29.The taller kit uses a plus-8-inch leaf to level the back of the kit to the 11 inches of lift up front.

30.CST offers optional rear dual shock hoop and brackets to keep the back symmetrical with the front and to add the extra damping needed for off-road use. Here, this dual shock bar was fished over the framerails, and brackets were fitted to the flanges for securing the hoop to the truck framerails.

31.No welding was necessary to fix the dual shock hoop to the truck frame. It simple bolted to the frame and hoop using 18 bolts and 16 nuts. We most certainly used thread-lock here.

32.The hardest part of the installation was actually attaching the lower dual shock mounts to the differential. We took care in cutting the stock shock mounts to ensure no damage was done to our diff.

33.After cutting the stock mount off, we were left with ugly welds on the differential.