Regular Cab Shortbed Build w/ 4-link and airshocks AND triple turbo motor swap!

jaredb900rr

jaredb900rr

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Joined
Apr 25, 2008
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494
Last year I bought a 2005 regular cab longbed diesel with 373,000 miles for $3,500 thru an auction. The plan was to take the triple turbo motor out of my black truck and put it into this one and turn it into a race truck. Well, business has been slow so I decided to hold off on the race build and start with just the shortbed swap. Wide Open Performance of Sandy, UT did an awesome job on the shortbed conversion, but in order to get a stance that I was happy with, we had to eliminate all but one leafspring, which left me resting on the bumpstops. The truck was EXTREMELY fun to drive compared to my quad cab longbed, but I needed to do something about the bone-jarring ride. I decided I needed to notch the frame to get axle clearance, so while I was doing some research, I found a 4-link setup from a company called No-Limit Engineering that is designed with longer bars for trucks. They suggested to use Shockwave airshocks from RideTech, so I ordered some dual adjustable Shockwave 7000 series shocks. I wanted to do the install myself, and my friend offered to let me use his shop on the weekends, so that's where I've been spending my free time the past few weekends. We got everything welded up and put back together, and the truck rides AMAZING! Next step will be to swap the triple turbo motor into this truck and then work on modifying the front suspension to equal the ride quality of the rear. Here's some pics of the build.

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damn I need to find a 1500 frame and put the cab and axle I have under it.
 
Sweet build. That looks like a well designed kit. Should ride like a dream.
 
Looks GREAT!

It will be interesting to see how well it does at the race track as far as traction is concerned. It's quite a bit different that a run of the mill 4-link for drag racing so I'm really curious to see if it can be tuned to hook up like a traditional 4-link rear.
 
Big Blue24 said:
Looks GREAT!

It will be interesting to see how well it does at the race track as far as traction is concerned. It's quite a bit different that a run of the mill 4-link for drag racing so I'm really curious to see if it can be tuned to hook up like a traditional 4-link rear.
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Ya, I'm curious, too. This was done as a somewhat budget build, mainly alot of my man hours for labor. If I decide to turn this into a race track competitor, it'll get a back half with all the goodies underneath to get it to hook up with some big slicks. And I figure I could sell this current setup as a cheap shortbed conversion to someone. I do plan to run the new 17" Hoosier slicks for the limited track use that it will see, but mainly this is just going to be a fun daily driver.
 
nice work

a little off topic, but do you think that 4 link kit would work on like a 4" lift application?
 
That thing looks straight nasty... I want one. Amazing work and it should be a blast on the road.
 
wideopen said:
Very Nice....What kind of time did you spend on the conversion?
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I spent ALOT of hours doing this over the course of 3 weekends. Almost everything I ordered had to be modified. The frame notch that I was sent was for a 1500 frame, even though I stressed I had a 2500 and told him the width I needed. Every axle bracket in the 4-link kit hat to be modified from a 3" axle to fit a 4" axle. If I would've had a plasma cutter, this build would've been MUCH easier. All I had were cutoff wheels to cut the frame and old suspension brackets. Numerous hours were spent with a 4" grinder, cleaning up the cuts and making everything smooth. Once everything was cleaned up, it went quickly.
 
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