Better late than never!!! Finally, after years of searching I have a Rancho lift on my H3. Took a while to get everything sorted between sourcing parts, vehicles, and just figuring out the overall final plan.
About a year and a half ago
Rascole hooked me up with H-D tie rods, a locking front axle, and a rear locker. Shortly after, I had the tie rods and a steering rack stabilizer installed which GREATLY improved the handling. I was also dealing with a pretty saggy rear end. Years of multi-hundred pound load outs for camping trips took their toll and I suffered from acute "Carolina Lean" syndrome. I had a set of Old Man Emu leaf springs installed which brought me up quite a bit in the back. Here's a pic to show the rake OME leaf springs cause with the torsion bars cranked to 23.5"...
After that, the truck stayed the same for a while. I started to despise the rake, just as I did back when the truck was stock. So I started desperately looking for a Rancho lift and found one in the absolutely CLEANEST 17 year old 200k mile
H3 vehicle I've ever seen. I picked that rig up in the Fall of last year. In December, I parted ways with Nitto Mud Grapplers and went with Toyo Open Country M/T's. I was mainly sick of the vague and rough on road performance, although I do miss the look and the sound. I wanted to keep the OEM wheels, I like the look more than most aftermarket wheels so I stuck with 315/75R16's. That decision also gave my wallet a break with all the other work being done.
In order to keep the wheels, I went with 1.75" Bora spacers. They look and feel great, unfortunately I forgot to get a pic of them for this post. I torqued them down with red loctite. They put the tires out about a quarter of an inch away from the tie rods on the Rancho knuckles, plenty of room. The day before I took the trucks to a local shop, I also installed an S-Pod switch. Huge thanks to
Acer4LO for your YouTube video, wouldn't have been able to do it without you... nor would I have ever had the idea.
I had the shop fabricate a mounting plate for the actual "pod" in the engine bay, right behind the battery.
The shop swapped the lift onto my truck and my stock components to the donor vehicle. They also installed the locking front axle from
Rascole and the rear locking diff internals. Diffs are now up to 4.56 from the stock 4.10s. Sadly the rear locker magnet needs to get replaced, but for the mean time I'm just running an open rear diff. I'll get around to it in a couple of months. Shift points didn't seem bad when I drove, but the speedo is between 5-10 MPH off depending on the speed. I'm going to work with PCM to get a tune, hoping that fixes the low end lag too. I expected quite a bit more pep off the line, moving from 4.10s to 4.56s, but oddly it's sort of sluggish.
I personally thought the donor vehicle looked too high with the (what I believe to be) Rancho leaf springs. Considering I just put on new OME leaves, I left the rear springs on their respective vehicles. I also felt the donor truck was very stiff when I had driven it before the swap and anticipated the leaf springs were partly responsible. The shop "de-cranked" my torsion bars to the point where the H3 sits level front to back. My CV's are sitting parallel to the ground now, surprising amount of improvement on the suspension feel. I forgot how much of a sacrifice in ride quality that was when I initially cranked them.
Overall, I'm very happy with the look and feel. I drove it about 100 miles today and every minute I was smiling ear to ear. Just enough height and clearance with a perfect stance on the tires. I anticipate a lot more articulation on the trails and I'm very excited to use that/those locker(s) too. Thank you to
Rascole, Acer4LO, and a few other members who've provided a piece to my rig over the years, this build wouldn't have been possible without you guys. Aside from a few cosmetic things and fixing the rear locker, my build is finally done.
My H3 started as a bare bones Alpha from CarMax with not a single inch on unpaved roads under its belt, nerf bars, and 31" radials to boot. She's sitting exactly where I imagined her to turn out when I bought her, almost 8 years ago to the day. It's been a fun journey building her up. Some things didn't pan out the way I wanted, but over time I dialed her into what I always imagined. I know the forum isn't as popular as it used to be, but I'm really happy to be able to share this with those of you who still linger around.
My rig and the donor before the swap
When I bought her...
Ironically, this was supposed to be a short post and I was going to direct you all to my build thread, but I guess I'll just re-post there for easy finding in the future.