Six inches can make a big difference in a lot of ways. It might put you past the "must be this tall" sign at the amusement park, but being 6 inches too tall might make it hard to find pants long enough to fit. You might stop 6 inches short of a cliff or not...but having your truck that much closer to the ground is always a good thing in this magazine. Even 4 inches can make a big difference, and when we put the two together in a 6/4 drop, the story gets even better!
Our test mule '72 C-10 has always been in the nosebleed range as far as stance goes, but there was always something else more pressing to fix on it. Well, its time has come. After a chat on the phone with the folks at Mike McGaughy's Classic Chevy Parts, we soon had a pile of boxes at our door with the answer to our prayers. We ordered the 2 1/2-inch dropped spindles and 2-inch dropped coils for the front and 4-inch dropped coils for the rear, as well as new shocks all the way around. To coincide with the lowering job, we figured it was time for some new shoes, too. Looking for more of an old school look, the Cragar S/S wheels were perfect. We got them in 15x6 along with the spacers needed for the front with disc brakes and all the required lug nuts from Cragar, then wrapped them with 225/75R15 tires with the whitewall out-sweet.
This job can definitely be done in the driveway or garage and only requires basic tools, with one of the few specific tools being a ball joint spreader. The hardest part about the job was cleaning all the layers of grease and dirt off the suspension parts and painting them before reassembly. In retrospect, I should have removed the control arms instead of spending all those hours in the wheelwells, so plan accordingly depending on your truck's condition. The only other parts you may need to buy are new hardware to mount the shocks and rear coils. The bolts that mounted the rear coils to the trailing arms were beyond scary on our truck.
All in all, we got a total drop of 6/4 with the McGaughy's parts and the Cragars with the slightly smaller tires. Just make sure there's still clearance for all the moving parts under the truck. I need to adjust the exhaust since the trailing arms only have about an inch of clearance until they hit the mufflers, but no biggie. Jump on the horn with McGaughy's and Cragar today to get down!
