Exactly what I was thinking (cutting it at the cab). The shops I talked to, though, recommended caging the cab too, so they can build the rear end off of that. They said without the bed, 30" of travel with a 20" shock was pretty reasonable. With the bed, they think 26" travel with an 18" shock.
Most places are quoting around 4k to tube the bed. The price goes up if I want to change shock mounting locations, and that doesn't include the new hardware (shocks, springs, fuel cell, etc...)
How far down this rabbit hole do I go?? And then, what's the point of 30" of rear travel when I've only got 12" up front... seems like the truck would be unbalanced. If I'm going to build a truck up, I might as well buy a wreck and go from there...
4K, that's not to bad at all, you have to think about how many hours go into building a truck at 55-65$ an hour plus materials, most big shops are in the 15-20K range. Who did you get a quote from?
Always cage the cab if your going to play hard in the dezert. And especially if your going to link the truck.
I'm kinda curious on the shock mounting location comment! No matter what the shock mounts have to be built cause you wont be using the stock mounts.
I've driven many trucks that have 12/13 up front and 28/30 inch's of travel in the rear and it does work pretty well cause the front tends to bounce over the whoops while the rear sucks them up. The rear tends to buck more than the front causing you to go end over end, this is why setting the rear up is more important.
.
This truck only has 13 up front and 28 in the rear and it loved 3-4 foot whoops
Building up a truck from scratch is NOT any cheaper, trust me, I should have bought a Raptor and slowly built it::::wanna trade
:::::
EDIT: 3-4 link doesn't really matter on a full size, 3 link is just fine as this will save you on heims, but in all honesty, whats a few hundred dollars. 4 link offers the option to limp back depending on what else it broke, if designed right you will never break an upper link.
