4"- 6" Stage I Superlift for '80-'96 Bronco

By: Steve Whatley

Parts List | Tools Needed | Time Needed | The Process | Problems


 

 

We'll get you a before picture soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's what is looked like with the addition of the 3" body lift and 35 BFG MTs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see where after a couple of months, the shock and spring had done a little rubbing.

 

Parts List:

Pivot point drops (driver and passenger side)
Radius arm drops (driver and passenger side)
Coil springs
Front/Rear shocks (4 shocks in front optional, 2 required)
Pitman arm
Blocks and U-bolts for the rear
Installation hardware

Tools Required:

Pitman arm puller (rent this one, you’ll never use it again)
Right angle drill
½" drive ratchet and sockets
Torque wrench capable of 170 ft/pounds
Jack stands
Hydraulic floor lift (more than one is a very good idea)
Centerpunch
File
Hammer
Assorted wrenches

Time Needed for Installation:

Instructions say 10 to 14 hours. It took me and two of my friends about 19 hours. That is excluding the first two days I messed with the Pro-Comp lift.

First off, to save any confusion, I will be referring to both the Pro-Comp and Superlift kit for my Bronco. I just want to apologize ahead of time for any badmouthing I do of Pro-Comp. If you got it to work for your truck I’m sure it’s a sturdy lift. I just couldn’t get mine on. I had originally bought the Pro-Comp Stage I kit and had numerous problems with it. Anyway, after three days of pounding on the Pro-Comp kit I took it back to 4WheelParts and they gave me the Superlift kit without any extra charge. Anywhere I had trouble or substituted parts I will make a note. The finished product turned out to be a hybrid of the Pro-Comp and Superlift kits. The rear end is Pro-Comp and all the shocks are Pro-Comp, but the coils and all the brackets are Superlift. If you’re looking for a lift for a Bronco or F150 I strongly suggest spending the extra money to get a Superlift or Rancho lift.

 

The Process:

  1. Always chock the wheels before raising the truck. Chock the rear wheels and raise the front of the vehicle. Place jack stands under the frame rails out of the way of any suspension parts. Remove the floor jacks and move them to support the axle for when you are ready to lower it. Remove tires also.
  2. Remove bolts holding original pitman arm and let the steering linkage hang. Remove the pitman arm using the pitman arm puller. (you can rent a pitaman arm puller from an auto parts store for free)
  3. Remove sway bars from frame and let them hang also.
  4. Mark the front driveshaft and the front differential yoke so they can reconnected in the correct way. Disconnect the driveshaft at the U-joint.
  5. Disconnect the brake lines and plug the ends so you don’t loose all your brake fluid. Disconnect the vent hose from the differential.
  6. Remove Nuts holding radius arms on. When taking the radius arms out take care to arrange the order of the washers and insulators so they can be reinstalled correctly. It is suggested that the rubber insulators be replaced for better ride. I did that and it cost about $45.00 total. Do not attempt to remove radius arm yet, just make sure all hardware holding it to the drop bracket has been taken off and organized correctly.
  7. Remove the spring’s lower retaining nut and washer, then remove the j-clip that holds the spring to the coil tower. Lower the jack enough to remove the spring. (I was unable to remove the spring until I had disconnected the shocks as well). Disconnect all hardware holding the shocks on and lower the driveshaft. At this point the radius arms will be free to slide out of the drop bracket. Make sure you either have jackstands or someone holding the radius arms up because when they come out of the brackets it could rotate your front end enough to make it fall off the floor jacks. Carefully move the front end out of your way.
  8. Now comes the fun part, removing the old brackets. They all have rivets but some more than others. I can’t remember exactly but I think we took out about 8 rivets. Most of the rivets are on the driver’s side pivot point. I used an air hammer with a chisel bit to knock off the heads. Then I used the hammer with a center punch in it to pop out the rivets.
  9. Like I said before I originally had a Pro-Comp kit and got fed up with and ended up with a Superlift. Well here’s where the two kits take different paths and I will compare how installing both went along the way.

  10. First use a file to clean up the areas you attack with the air tools. Now mount the new driver side radius arm drop with the existing holes. Do not tighten down! You need this in place to drill new holes. (For the Pro-Comp kit three new holes needed to be drilled for each radius arm bracket, Superlift required one.) With bracket in place, use a center punch to mark the holes. Remove bracket and drill holes. I found it easiest to drill a pilot hole before the ½ inch holes. ALSO, VERY IMPORTANT. THE INSTRUCTIONS SAY YOU NEED A ½ INCH DRIVE RIGHT ANGLE DRILL WHICH IS HUGE AND I COULD NOT GET IT INTO THE TIGHT SPACES NEEDED TO DRILL THESE HOLES. IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO AIR TOOLS AN AIR DRILL IS VERY TINY AND WILL DO THE JOB IF YOU BUY BITS THAT ARE STEPPED DOWN TO A 3/8 INCH DRIVE.
  11. .

  12. Now you can reattach the bracket, loctite and tighten bolts down to the torque specification chart . Do this same process for the rest of the brackets. There are four. (When you come to the pivot point brackets you will see the difference between Pro-Comp and Superlift. Pro-comp needed drilling in places I couldn’t even reach with the air drill. Another very annoying Pro-Comp trait is that since the Pro-Comp parts are lesser quality metal, a stiffener plate is needed. This requires that you move your power steering cooling line which runs along the front crossmember. The weak metal also accounts for the need to drill so many holes for support. Superlift only needed two holes drilled for each pivot point and they were easily accessible. Pro-Comp needed 5 for the driver side bracket alone. If you feel the two "identical" brackets you can tell the Superlift bracket is thicker and weighs almost twice as much. Just make me feel safer to have the most heavy duty equipment)
  13. Install new pitman arm and torque to correct specification. (this is where you need a torque wrench that goes up to 170 ft/lbs.)
  14. Now move the front end back into position. Position the radius arms into there drop brackets first. Install the new bushings and put the nut back on the radius arms but do not tighten. These will act as guides to line up the pivot points.
  15. Raise floor jack and position beams into pivot point drops. This takes some time. When trying to line up the holes one trick we used was to stick a center punch through the bracket hole and played with the arm until it lined up. This will catch the arm in the correct place and you can line up the holes perfectly.
  16. After the pivot points are tightened down you can also tighten down the radius arm nuts.
  17. With front end back in place it is time to install the new springs. First attach the new coil to the coil tower with the existing j-clip. Now raise the axle enough attach the lower retaining nut and washer. After both sides are done it time for shocks. If you have dual shock mounts make sure you know there are two different size shocks for each side. The shock closest to the front of the vehicle is shorter than the shock on the other side of the coil. If you do this wrong you will not be able to get two of the shocks on.
  18. Now reattach the control arm to the pitman arm. Reattach the anti-sway bars. Line up the drive shaft with the marks you made earlier and connect the u-joint again. Also reattach the vent hose to the differential.
  19. And now it’s time to connect the brake lines. With the four inch lift new brake lines are not needed. Just reattach them and bleed the brakes. Make sure you did not loose too much brake fluid in this process. Check the reservoir.
  20. Now you can put the wheels on and let the truck down.
  21. For the rear end of the truck it’s simple. First, of course, chalk the front wheels put the rear end frame on jack stands. Place a floor jack under the differential for support when you lower the axle.
  22. Remove the wheels and remove the existing u-bolts and shocks.
  23. Now lower the axle enough to get one of the new blocks positioned in there. Make sure to stack the blocks. By that I mean leave the existing block and add the lift block under it. I made the mistake of switching out the new for the old and I couldn’t figure out why the rear was sagging. Guess I learned the hard way. Once the block is in place, raise the floor jack enough to make the blocks sit properly in mounts designated for them. You can tell when they click into place. Now just put the new u-bolts on and tighten it enough to keep it in place but not all the way. Now lower the jack a little and do the other side.
  24. Once the blocks are in place you can install the new shocks. They give no extra hardware for the rear kit so keep all the nuts and bolts you take off. All of them are reused except of course the u-bolts.
  25. Now that all that is in place, check to make sure the brake lines are not in danger of being overextended. Again I didn’t have a problem with brake lines, but it was only a 4" lift.

Problems:

Most of the questions I get asked about my lift is "What can go wrong if I do it to my truck?" Well I’ve had a few problems but not many. Most of the problems occur in installation stage. I have already expressed my dislike of the Pro-Comp lift kit. I’ve already been over Pro-Comps problems so I’ll get to the general "lift" problems. Like I mentioned before a big problem for a lot of people is having the right tools. I was fortunate enough to have a friend who knows a mechanic that let us use his shop. Rivets can pose a big time problem without air tools or a torch. Also I found a ½ inch drive right angle drill hard to come by and when I got it the thing was so massive I couldn’t get it into the cramped undercarriage to drill the proper holes. Another problem that took a while for us was getting the front end to line back up after the brackets were in place. It’s so heavy that it took a person on each end to rotate it into position and one to line up the holes all at the same time. But that’s not really a big problem. Other than that the installation wasn’t bad. So far I haven’t had but one problem that I just noticed. I appears that my new larger coils in the front had put dents in my brand new shocks. If I can attach a picture I will. I have dual shocks and the shocks closer to the rear of the vehicle are very close to the coil. I don’t think this will happen unless you have dual shocks because the other two shocks in front are fine. Anyway, it looks like after some heavy off-roading when my coil was compressed almost all the way it hit the side of my shocks and dented them in about 1/8 to 1/4 inch in several places. I doesn’t really affect anything that I can tell but it kinda ticks me off after spending that kind of money on a lift. I don’t think anything can be done about this unless you try to relocate the shock mounts. Other than that I haven’t noticed anything and I’ve had the lift on for about five months. I think the problems are minimal for the joy of all that clearance. It’s great once it’s on.