You've got a c10. You need one of these. Sure do.
Hey I'm Steve back here in the QA1 garage with Damien Brase looking at the new c10
crossmember. Tell us Damien what is going on with the c10 crossmember. Well this is our 63
to 87 c10 crossmember you know one of the biggest problems with lowering a c10 is ground clearance.
We've raised the lower control arm mounts two inches on this crossmember for improved clearance
and additional lowering capability we've added a rack to it to get rid of the factory steering box
help tighten up the steering get rid of that worn out power box or manual box depending on the year
of the truck. This is a completely bolt-in system. We've got modular engine mounts so
it's going to cover your big blocks small block LS. We've even got you weld it mounts if you
want to put your engine in some other location in stock. It looks a lot lighter too than what
comes out of that truck. Yeah. Yeah we've taken a good amount of weight out of this as we've raised
everything up for the added ground clearance. All right well now that we know about the crossmember
let's get it in this old thing. Yeah let's get this factory crossmember out steering out.
Sounds good. Bolt her up. So getting ready to put that crossmember in we've got obviously the
front clip and the engine out of this what more are we gonna have to do Damien? Well depending
on your truck and how it's set up the spindles and brakes might be the only thing that you're reusing
or if you're adding drop spindles and different brakes you know basically the whole crossmember
and steering system can come out on both the steering shaft at the column here and
drop the crossmember and all the suspension out together. Should just be able to drop it all as
one huh? And you know we're taking a substantial amount of weight off the front of the truck
so we're going to want to make sure that the back is supported well so it doesn't tip off. Let's do
it so with the engine out we've got the engine stands and mounts out. We've got the bolts out
of the upper control arm mounts on the outside of the frame. Now we've just got these three bolts on
the bottom of the frame rail to take out and this whole thing's gonna drop out. Depending on the
year of your truck you're gonna wanna check for brake lines and make sure none of that's connected
and we've got the tie rod ends loose already too so that'll make it easier to get this out.
All right so we've got the original crossmember all torn out we're down
to basically the frame rails where do we go from there Damien? Well we're gonna lift that thing
up into place and we're gonna put bolts through the center holes from the factory crossmember
and that's our starting point. That's how we locate everything. This would be a good time
for a customer to paint their frame or clean it up as they will. On this one - If
you wanted to do that that'd be great. We don't have time so we're not going to. Plus
if we painted it. Wouldn't match the rest of the truck. Someday. All right let's get it put in.
So now we've got the crossmember in place located with a single bolt on each side.
We've got four holes to drill on the bottom.
Two more 3/8 holes to drill here and then we've got the four half inch holes.
I like to use a drill bit the same size as the hole that we need to drill put a pilot
in there basically that's marking the center of the hole so I did that on all of these and then
I'm going to come back with a smaller bit make a pilot hole and then I'll actually drill it out.
In order to get more ground clearance we've raised the suspension mounting points.
So these larger holes here where the factory upper control arm mounting bolts would go through and we
are drilling new holes up approximately an inch and a half higher. So the new upper control arm
mounting studs are going to go through these holes here. I'm just enlarging them a little bit over
half inch to give a little more clearance putting it in.
Now that we've got the crossmember in place we're going to move forward what's the next step
Damien? We've got the new upper shock mount in place we're using this as a drill guide.
We've got two holes to drill in the top and two holes to drill on the side of the frame once we
get those holes located we've got an inner bracket that we can put in and get all this
bolted together start hanging control arms. Nice let's do it. In locating our upper shock mount
we're going to have two slotted holes here this is because the earlier trucks have a shorter
frame height. So you'll line up these two holes with the two slotted holes
there is a hole very close to one of these holes it's not made to line up
we're just going to focus on these two side holes get it clamped into place and then drill it.
So with the crossmember in place we've got our upper shock mounts on. Used those to locate
the holes and drilled the holes in the top and side. That's going to help locate the inner brace
and once we get this tightened up this hole should
line up in the crossmember here and we can get the bolt in there.
So one thing that we ran into on this one the inside of the frame has undercoating on it and
probably grease and gunk. We actually had to scrape that off to get everything to line up.
And even still we're going to put these on loosely and then draw it all in. Yeah we're
we're getting all the bolts in loosely and then we'll start tightening them down once
everything's in. With many already existing customers having the QA1 set up on their trucks
the new crossmember will not use a cross shaft for mounting we'll have just two pivot points
in the crossmember so what do we have to do for existing customers Damien. All right so the new
crossmember is backwards compatible with all existing QA1 c10 kits to make that work we need
to remove the cross shaft. We're going to mount the bushing housings directly to the crossmember.
So if we're doing a retrofit install we need to take these bolts out of the end of the cross shaft
and I would recommend doing that while this cross shaft is still bolted to the factory crossmember.
There's blue Loctite on those things and it can be a real bear to hold this thing tight and get
that Loctite to let loose. Once these cap screws are out we will need to remove at least one of
these housings to get the cross shaft out. But you do want to loosen up the bolts on both sides
that way when you put it into the crossmember we can get everything aligned tightened down
and then come back and tighten up the bolts on the lower control arm. That way there's
no friction there's no binding and we keep that nice smooth movement on the lower control arms.
And the only other thing that will have to be done to existing customers arms is the the lower shock
mounts. Right so on the retrofit kit we raised the suspension and to add to that increased ground
clearance that we wanted we did go with a lower profile shock mount to move the lower shock mount
up. So swap out your existing lower shock mounts to the new ones included in the retrofit kit. Now
for customers that don't already have any of the QA1 stuff all of this stuff is coming to them new
arms with the crossmember what's the differences there as far as the install. So on the install
we're not going to have the cross shaft included with the arms and being that we're going to have
to have the bolts loose and get these aligned with the crossmember when we do the install. These are
going to be packaged separately so when you get the arm you'll open the box up the arm will be in
there the bushing housings will be in there with the bolts. Go ahead get these loosely bolted up.
And when you bolt them onto the cross member you put the sleeves in install the spacer on each side
and we're going to bolt it up. All right. So pretty straightforward.
We've got a spacer that needs to go on each side of the bushing housing
and I don't have quite enough hands to hold everything together and put the bolts in
so a little bit of grease on the spacer here stick it on it's going to hold it
in place and then we can install the arm on the cross member and put the bolts in.
Now the control arm's on I'm going to bolt the shock mount brackets on
and then install the shock.
We've got the lower control arm installed pivot bolts tightened up on this side Steve's going
to get the ones on that side. Now we need to tighten up the bolts on the bushing housing here.
I've put the tether in here just to hold everything up and make it
easier to work on we'll get to that in a minute.
We've got the lower control arm on the pivot bolts are tightened up we tightened up the
bearing housing bolts here. Now we're ready to put the shock on. So with the shock we want
to put the tether on and the wider spacer with the cutout in it goes on the bottom.
We got that slid in there we've adjusted the hoist so that and then set the lower control
arms on a jack stand so that the bolts going to line up here when we're ready.
But we're not quite ready for the shock yet. We need to put the upper
control arm on and make sure we put the concave spacers on over the mounts here.
Slide the upper control arm on.
And actually tip it back just enough and have it sit out of the way.
So now with the upper arm on grab the bolt
and grab our quarter inch spacers these need to go on each side of the bearing.
And we do have three different mounting holes with the upper shock mount bracket here.
This is to give it added ride height adjustability.
So we're going to go for maximum drop on this one and put it in the top hole.
Now we got the bolt in and put our upper spacer on and then once we get a little bit more weight
on the front of the truck we can go ahead and set it down and get the tether looped over the
mount. We've got the tether on here this is about a quarter inch shorter than the fully
extended length of the shock so it's going to prevent the shock from going to full droop
and once we get our rack and pinion put in it's going to prevent the possibility of the
inner tie rod ends getting bent.
Shock's in place we've got the bolts in here we've got the upper control arm on before we put the
spindle on. We want to go ahead and install the rack just so we don't have to mess around with
spindles and brakes being in the way this rack it's based on a 97-04 Dodge Dakota. Gives us good
travel puts the input in the right spot inside the frame so you don't have to modify anything.
With the raised suspension we couldn't use the factory steering box because the steering
shaft would run directly through the upper control arm. So going to the rack is a good
solution to fix that and improve the steering feel and get rid of that worn out heavy box.
We do need to install the bushings for the new engine mounts on the crossmember.
It is easier to do before the rack goes in but there is just enough room to slide it in
if you forgot like we did and need to put that in.
Putting our tie rods together here to go on the rack. First thing to note this is a left hand rod
end and you can tell the left hand from the right. Left hand has a groove machined into it right does
not. So we want to thread that on there thread that onto the inner tie rod end on the rack.
Once we get this together we want to put our spacers together.
So first one to go in we've got a tapered spacer that goes in the top side of the steering arm.
This basically makes this a straight through design so we don't have to drill out the
steering arm this is designed to work on the square body spindles so 73 to 87 spindles
and we put the tapered spacer in that allows us to use a 9/16
bolt drops right in. Spacer on the bottom side for bumps to your correction and bolts together.
Well Damien we've got most of the suspension installed and got the truck in the air.
Figured we'd go ahead and go after this front sway bar tell us about the install on that.
So we've got these new brackets to move the sway bar up increase the ground clearance there.
You're going to have to remove the factory sway bar brackets which we've already done
and then these are going to bolt on using the rear mounting hole from the factory bracket
and then we will have to drill a new hole just a little bit forward to that.
Okay. Yeah I noticed just the rear hole lines up but we didn't use the front hole due to
we're trying to get the sway bar tucked up in there right? What I'm hearing. Yep
so we needed to move the bracket forward a little bit help space things out all right.
We've got the sway bar brackets installed on the frame. Make sure you put the bolts
in with the threads pointing down before you bolt the brackets up tight. The
sway bar is installed inch and 3/8 diameter. The QA1 control arms work exclusively with the
QA1 sway bar and the reason for that is our rod and style end link. So this very low friction
takes a lot of bind out of the front suspension and actually makes a noticeable improvement on
the ride quality versus the OE sway bar. We've got high misalignment spacers in the lower. On
the upper we've got a stud that goes in here with the high misalignment step built into it
and then we've got a high misalignment spacer that goes on followed by a nut.
This suspension system was designed around 18 and 20 inch wheels. With an 18 or a 20 you do
have plenty of clearance around the rod end here the wheel's actually going to be down around
and over the rod end. It can be used with a 15 inch wheel but we are going to want to remove
the spacers. The bump steer isn't going to be as good but we won't have to worry about the tire
getting cut by the rod end. So if you do have to run 15 inch wheels on your project for appearance
or preference you are going to have a little bit more bumps here than what this system was
designed to have. Just remove that spacer bolt the rod on tight to the bottom of the steering arm.
So I've got the wheels back on the front of the truck and got it set down
where we've got some load on the springs now we can get this tether put on.
So get that up over the shoulder flat washer we'll get the nut on there tighten it up that'll keep
the tethers in place. I'll raise it up keep going on putting the rest of the truck back together.
Well that pretty well wraps up the install of the suspension itself. I've got the engine mount
brackets to go in here these are the LS mounts we do have some for small block and big block engines
as well and there's another bracket that goes on the engine block we'll get that put in. We've got
a bracket that goes on the top of the frame rail with a support bearing for the two-piece steering
shaft once the engine's back in with the headers we can go ahead and build the steering shaft.
So engine needs to go back in front clip back on. But suspension-wise
that pretty well takes care of it. Thanks for watching and remember to #goDRIVEit.