How much of a pain in the *** is the install?
I did it my driveway, no lift, no jacks, no jack stands. There are some intricate things like fishing the nuts into the frame section.
Instructions say to drop the drive shaft - I didn’t have to do that. It did make the drilling a little challenging, but I’ve had worse.
I had this done over the course of 2 evenings after work. Ran out of daylight the first evening and was close. I had to stop a few times to sanity check things - bending the brake line bracket is a bit on the disconcerting side. Also, you need to be cognizant that the brake lines have full travel -- AND -- don’t impact the t/a itself. I think we have a thread somewhere on FRF on install issues for the torque arm..
Also, one of our users found out the hard way - you need to have the suspension loaded for the arm “adjustment”. Else the yoke will get mangled.
If you do a driveway install, not a problem. Also, the diff shield can be problematic and you won’t know until you fit it to the truck. The front ... what is, a collar or brace, can rock under load and impact the pinion. You can check when you fit the diff shield. if it looks like it will hit, don’t install it. This is not unique to any year, but rather the diff pumpkin itself which apparently had different suppliers. You may also take a cutting torch to that ‘collar’ area and relieve it, then install the diff shield.
Figuring out that last part cost me about 2.5 hours, including a couple of calls to KHC and exchanged pictures. I had to pull the diff shield after installing it.
Once I buttoned up from the 2nd evening I went out for a spin in 2h. I was able to do a couple launches before the torque arm, which as you may imagine was rather dramatic with some pretty awesome hop, and a lot of steering correction. Afterwards, I repeated the launches in the same place, under the same conditions and the launches were MUCH less dramatic, much less steering input but still quite a bit of spin
This isn’t a difficult install, I had nothing more than fancy hand tools to do this.