Post Body Lift Idle Vibration

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Austin Sewell

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Hey everyone, I'm finishing up the PA 70023 body lift installation on my truck, just need to cut front metal bumper (driving it with no outer cover on ATM) and relocate gas cap. I had bad body mounts, so I replaced them with the ProThane kit the same time I put my lift blocks in. Everything seemed to installed fine, no binds, all nice and tight with Loctite. Good to go right? Not quite.



After the lift, two major things I noticed right away when I drove it for the first time post-lift:



-Mainly, I have an obnoxious low drone and vibration when the truck is in drive with the brakes on, goes away when I accelerate or change to neutral. Before the lift I had a faint rattle when in drive that wasn't always noticeable, could the lift and new body mounts have amplified an existing issue? I have all new plugs and a clean IAC, 181k miles.



-Steering hesitates to straighten when you let it go after a turn, and seems harder to steer. I did install the spacer from the PA kit, and had to hammer the links together because they had a slight difference in angle to each other, not telescoping together correctly.



I'm excited about this lift, just need to get gas filler and front bumper back together. I'll definitely post some pictures in one of the lift threads somewhere.....
 
I'm not sure about the drone and vibration. Nothing I can remember that you should have done for the body lift should have affected the driveline.



For the steering, you may have damaged the clock spring if the steering wheel was moved at all while not attached to the steering shaft.
 
Plus 1 to both notes from Hugh.



I didn't have either of these occur after my body lift. The only things I had that happened were: one of the lines to the gas filler neck wasn't quite long enough and that the A/C line now came in contact with the serpentine belt.
 
The steering, Sounds as if your toe or camber settings are outward too much. Try adjusting both tie rods inward 1/2 round. Turning both tires inward. Maybe more with alift and large tires.
 
Update! The transmission mount was fine, it just didn't look like I would have expected. Rather, an aha moment hit me when I realized that the vibration was related to the serpentine belt and it's speed with the engine. When I put a load on the AC clutch or alternator by engaging AC or rolling up shut windows, the vibration got worse. I popped the hood to check on the belt tensioner clearance of the body and noticed my AC line was vibrating. Silly me, I missed that the first couple of times I looked. AC compressor is bolted to the cabin and the hardline coming from the radiator was contacting the bottom of the tensioner, transmitting all tensioner vibration from the engine to the cabin via that hardline. Problem solved easily by relocating/bending the hardline away from the tensioner.



Don't know what happened with steering, was turning it back and forth while stationary (trying to find the source of the vibration) and something sounded like a spring clicking and everything works as it did before now. Glad things are working better now, truck looks sick.
 
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