Differential Drop Brackets
Lifting a front IFS (independent front suspension) suspended truck, you run into problems with your front cv drive angles. The higher you lift your truck the steeper the angles become. If the angles on your cv’s are too steep you will run into premature joint failure, boot failure, and excessive bind potentially causing catastrophic cv failure when dropping out the front suspension.
In our experience, 3” is the most lift you can have without drop brackets and safely run your cv drive angles with reliability and long life when combined with the proper length strut spacer. Too much drop out on a lifted IFS truck is your enemy while articulating. Being that maximum wheel travel in the front is completely dictated by the cv, the more you lift your truck the less downward travel or drop out you have before you encounter cv bind. Even in a limited set-up such as this wheel, drop out can still be maximized.
Our front drop brackets drop the front diff 2” and when combined with the proper lift springs and strut spacers, this allows full usage of the cv’s length and drop out. We literally limited the drop out to full extension before bind.
We hear lots of concerns of vulnerability of the front diff once the diff has been dropped. In relationship to your new-found height, the diff is actually in a safer position. To us, the trade-off is a no-brainer because if you don’t drop the diff and you go into cv lock or bind you can destroy the diff and cv’s completely. To date, we have not had a single front diff failure due to its new position. If need be, complete peace of mind comes at the cost of a front skid plate.
* 2003 model year was a change over year, please specify which center differential bracket your vehicle has when ordering