Daystar: Leveling an F-150 In Under An Hour

The 2-1/2" leveling kit consists of a pair of polyurethane spacers and six stud extensions. Thread-locking compound and detailed instructions are also included. It's manufactured in the USA and comes with a lifetime warranty.

Late-model trucks have several advantages over their previous generations: they ride better, they get better fuel mileage, and they are generally more powerful. Across the board, however, the earlier trucks have one big advantage, they sit higher, making them better suited to accepting larger-than-stock tires. Why is it that just about every late-model truck out there has ground clearance closer to a passenger car than a real truck?
The engineers at Daystar set to work rectifying the situation by providing a simple and economical way to level out the front of a truck and make room for larger tires and wheels without sacrificing the good ride and handling characteristics one expects from a new truck. 

So how is that possible? It has to do with how the

Start by supporting the front of the vehicle on jackstands and removing the front tires. Remove the anti-sway bar links and unbolt the brake line bracket at the frame. With the lower control arm supported by a jack, remove the upper ball joint nut and use the appropriate tool to separate it from the knuckle. The ball joint has an interference fit (similar to a tie rod end) and will take some force to separate. This is possibly the most difficult part of the whole installation, and it's no big deal to do.

vehicle is lifted. Chevy, Dodge, Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and other manufacturers utilize a compact strut assembly consisting of a coil spring and shock for the front suspension of their new trucks. Some leveling kits on the market require disassembling the strut and adding a preload spacer. Daystar takes a different approach by placing a spacer on top of the factory strut assembly. Spacing down the factory strut provides the necessary lift but it does not impact ride quality because the factory strut stays just like it was when stock. So there is lift without degrading ride quality.
We followed the installation of one of their leveling kits on a 2007 F-150. The install took under an hour from start to finish, not counting the necessary time on the alignment rack once the installation is complete (all leveling kits require realignment). AsDaystar promises, there was no perceptible decrease in ride quality, no strange new clunks and noises, and the vehicle easily aligned to factory specs. Though the photos and captions detail the install on an '04-'08 F-150, the installation steps are nearly identical for all late-model 2WD and 4WD trucks. Now you can make some room for 20s or 22s or just level your truck at an affordable price.

There are a total of three nuts that attach the upper end of the strut to the frame (arrows). Remove and discard these nuts. There's enough room on an F-150 to reach these nuts from the fenderwell (a ratchet wrench is the perfect tool for the job), but on some applications they are only accessible from the engine compartment.	Next loosen the bolt that attaches the lower end of the strut to the lower control arm. The bolt is pretty big and takes a 21mm and 24mm socket. It is not necessary to remove the bolt entirely.

 

Lower the front suspension enough to separate the top of the strut from the mount on the frame. It will be necessary to push up on the upper control arm in order to get the top of the strut out. At this point you can remove the strut from the vehicle, or simply tilt out the strut to work on it. Dab the supplied thread locking compound on the studs on top of the strut and then thread the stud extensions over the factory studs and torque to the proper specifications.

Next, position the polyurethane spacer over the stud extensions. Daystar uses polyurethane spacers rather than steel because urethane is an insulator; it enhances the Noise, Vibration, and Harmonic (NVH) canceling characteristics that the factory builds into its suspension designs. There is no metal-on-metal contact, and urethane will not rust over time. It doesn't wear out and will look just like it came out of the box years from now.

With the spacer in place, raise the suspension so that the upper end of the strut seats in its mount on the frame and secure it using the supplied hardware. Rather than loosen the upper control arm bolts (which would throw alignment out of whack), the installer used a pry bar to lower the upper control arm and line up the upper ball joint with the knuckle. Secure the ball joint using the factory nut and tighten to the proper specifications.

With the strut back in place and the control arm re-attached to the knuckle, it's just a matter of tightening the lower end of the strut, bolting the brake line bracket back on the frame, and double-checking all of the hardware for proper torque. The installer left the sway bar loose until the other side was completed, which makes the installation much easier. Once finished, it's hard to tell the vehicle has been modified.