Leveling out suspension vs down travel

Have had a lift put in my truck for a descent while now and I'm starting to want to get it leveled out at the front (back sitting higher) After seeing a lot of 4x4's getting around all jacked up and sitting level.....

The task is easily performed by adding spacers to the top of the springs. The question I'm toiling with now is. Should I have the truck sit level (purely cosmetics) at the expense of loss in down travel in the front.

Rough estimations would be around the 30-40mm loss in down travel

What are your thoughts on this fellas???

I'd be more concerned about the angles on the CV.

Loss of down-travel is an issue but I don't think it's as bad as you think. I'm not sure you'd lose that much, because if I recall correctly, 10mm of spacer would give you 20mm of rise, or something like that.

Did you replace the upper control arms?

This topic has been raised many times, you'll find that there is no lose of down travel, and if you add aftermarket uca's you will gain a slight increase in down travel, the biggest issue is like mentions cvs ball joints and camber adjustment.

I haven't replaced them yet not.
A little confused about the process with getting it engendered :/

CV will be more than fine on a D40 with spring lift and spacers combine.
The down travel loss really is a big deal and you will notice the change in handling for the worse.

D40s and Pathfinders only have 7.5inches of total front wheel travel, I read in an american frontier guide to aim for 2.5 inches of down travel to keep the truck handling ok over bumps.

I have done the spring+Spacer+UCA on my d40 and i can vouch for the above info.
Unless you have a way of getting back your lost down travel just keep it how it is for now.

Bigreg said:

CV will be more than fine on a D40 with spring lift and spacers combine.
The down travel loss really is a big deal and you will notice the change in handling for the worse.

D40s and Pathfinders only have 7.5inches of total front wheel travel, I read in an american frontier guide to aim for 2.5 inches of down travel to keep the truck handling ok over bumps.

I have done the spring+Spacer+UCA on my d40 and i can vouch for the above info.
Unless you have a way of getting back your lost down travel just keep it how it is for now.

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That's what I was looking for thank you mate, much appreciated.

Now as an added side note, while I was fitting y recovery points today I had a gander at my cv angles an they are slightly angled up....
Thoughts?

Bigreg said:

CV will be more than fine on a D40 with spring lift and spacers combine.
The down travel loss really is a big deal and you will notice the change in handling for the worse.

D40s and Pathfinders only have 7.5inches of total front wheel travel, I read in an american frontier guide to aim for 2.5 inches of down travel to keep the truck handling ok over bumps.

I have done the spring+Spacer+UCA on my d40 and i can vouch for the above info.
Unless you have a way of getting back your lost down travel just keep it how it is for now.

Click to expand...

What UCA are you running Bigreg??

Yup stock d40s CVs are some times angle up or level thats why lifting a d40 CVs usually are not a concern.

UCAs im running are Calmini, please dont take that as meaning they are the best, far from it but they all seem to have pros and cons

Bigreg said:

Yup stock d40s CVs are some times angle up or level thats why lifting a d40 CVs usually are not a concern.

UCAs im running are Calmini, please dont take that as meaning they are the best, far from it but they all seem to have pros and cons

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Do the calmini UCA have any adjustment to correct camber issues?
And can i ask what sort of $$$ they set you back??
Cheers, Nathan

Would it be these ones?

http://www.purenissan.com/D40Control Arm.htm

how would you lose down travel. if the strut is only relocated lower due to a specer it still hits the same thing when it drops. meaning your range of travel is still the same you just use more uptravel and the car will flex more.

Yep those ones, no adjustable camber but they put your caber range back within range so your stock LCA cam bolts can fine tune it, thats assuming you have a D40 with stock cambolts. Word of warning the calmini product did not fit very well so i would be either trying some thing else or do some slight mods to your stock arms and coil bucket. I will do a more indepth post on what i mean tomorrow.

Good to know...

Maybe you could answer the post above yours too? I feel I won't make much sense if I was to try and respond....

d40ryan said:

how would you lose down travel. if the strut is only relocated lower due to a specer it still hits the same thing when it drops. meaning your range of travel is still the same you just use more uptravel and the car will flex more.

Click to expand...

You loose down travel because the static height is now lower down in your travel by adding a spacer. Stock D40s and most aftermarket 50mm struts are designed to control/stop drop on the actual strut topping out, i.e. there is no bump stop for full down travel. The calmini has a bump stop on the UCA that hits the coil bucket, this sounds better that your shock taking that force on topout but in now introduces extra stress on the ball joints when top out occurs. If you buy Calmini arms dont expect to get any extra down travel with out the possibility of having to attack your coil bucket slightly with a grinder.
If i would have known i would have just kept stock arms and modded the coil bucket a bit. Don't expect any warranty from calmini either. Remember you dont have to grind much away to gain down travel due to the leverage ratio. By grinding i am talking about the excess steel from the press process that is on the outter edge of the coil bucket. We did lots of trial and measure of the stock UCA and calmini vs down travel. The only reason i kept the arms was because it corrected my camber and at that time off set bushes where not available.