The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Lowering a 62 chevy 1/2 ton

I have a friend who is wanting to lower his 1962 Chevy 1/2 ton. Front is the torsion bar suspension. Can anyone tell me the best way for him to do this?

drop spindles on the front lowering springs on the rear

Where is a good place to look for these items?

www.mcgaughysclassic.com www.earlyclassic.com

I'll give them a look, thank you.

Just behind the transmission on the underside there is a crossmember. You'll see that the torsion bars end at this crossmember. The bars are connected to the torsion arms. There are large bolts with special washers on the other side of the arms on each side that go up through the crossmember. You simply turn the nut on the bottom either direction to lower or raise the truck. Make sure to wire brush the top sides of the bolts very thoroughly beforehand and use plenty of Kroil. The bolts are long enough to slam it or raise the front end, no costs or extra parts involved. Beware, each bolt must me turned the exact same and you may have te re-align the front end. Also, the higher you can lift the truck, the easier this is. You may have to raise it and lower it a few times to get to the desired height. Having torsion bars is one of the good sides of a mixed blessing when owning a 60-62! As far as the rear, if it is all original, he will have rear coils. just heat up the original coil springs, or... go spend money at All American classics, Chevy Duty, Jim Carter, LMC, etc... for a new pair of shorter coils. BTW, IMHO the 60-62s with this suspension is one of the smoothest riding trucks G.M. ever made including the modern ones.

I'm about to deal with this same decision. Before I bought the truck, I already had things "figured out"--it was going to get the later cross member swap, coil springs, disc brakes and dropped spindles.
Then I drove it 1000 miles home over back roads, small towns and interstate. The torsion bar suspension is absolutely fantastic!
So now I want to keep it.
Question: does raising or lowering the front by way of adjusting the torsion bars affect the spring rate/ride quality? If it does, then it'd be worth it to me to buy the drop spindles when I can afford it.
-Brad

rad go w/spindles-as you "raise" torsion bars the ride gets harsher, lowering gives a softer ride-too much either way is either too harsh or too mushy, brian

Seems to me that raising or lowering the torsion bars wouldn't change the ride noticeably,since you aren't changing anything but the height of the anchor point at one end of the bar. Paint a spot on the side of the barat each end of the torsion bar before you adjust,compare before with after and you'll see the same amount of twist,won't you? As soon as I can afford an alignment for mine,I'm going to crank the front up about 3 inches,so the truck'll sit closer to level. About the only other mods I plan to do is to move the bottoming snubbers up a similar amount so as to not slam the torsion bars hard enough to break one if I hit a speed dip too fast or something. All that extra travel would be cool,but,face it,these things are 44 years old now...
Speed