Steel leaf springs and 97 diff installed! here is the fiberglass monoleaf compared to the steel- The monoleaf has these rubber blocks glued to it sort of 1/3rd the way through. Curious what their function is, if it has something to do with vibration, noise? interesting concept http://i1217.photobuck...

Good call! moving over the bump stop, need a second one. somewhere in the life of this van one was lost. Update- new suspension in, and diff back up! I discovered two things- 1- if you disconnect the front spring hangar first, its way easier to remove the spring. If you unbolt the rear shackle, the ...

well so far im getting my ass kicked on this project. 4 hours in, all I have is the diff down, and one fiberglass spring out. All bolts rusted, all bolts seized in the bores of the bushings and requiring major work to extract. Fortunately I just recently took down the fuel tank, so getting into that...

so here are my parts finally arrived- This is the stuff I got from GMpartseast. consist of- 2ct 15732089 Front Hangars 2ct 15688335 Plate ASM 2ct 15707588 Shackle A 2ct 15722955 Plate None are painted, and GMpartseast is not about to get any awards for packing these items since they were all thrown ...

\:D/ A great list ! Might wanna get a new rubber brake line and maybe even some new emergency brake cables as well whilst your in there... The ebrake cables are a bit known for seizing up, holding your brakes. Im toying with getting rid of the entire cable parking brake system. Ive been researching...

I went nuts on GM parts east website. There I bought stock spring upper and lower inner clamps for a 97 astro, front spring hangars, and just to complete the set, rear shackles. Ill post part numbers as soon as this package arrives I then went a website called ATSsprings.com and got their replacemen...

had some stuff break on my stock 200k fiberglass suspension, and figured I would start a thread with my solution to the problem via the method of throwing lots of money at it. :D I have an 89 shorty, and the driver side leaf upper clamp broke recently- http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd387/tinwo...

update- so its been pretty useful so far, not much in the way of continued improvement on the swap yet as ive been busy, but day to day use has been quite acceptable. I did get a somewhat expensive alignment taking the shop two hours to get the camber proper, but now it tracks straight and stopped c...

so I have the hatch installed and have been using this van all week for work. Couple little emergencies so far, one the throttle linkage on the injection pump kept popping off, happened twice in heavy traffic, and was a real pain, but i swapped out the end piece with a spare ball joint. The snap rin...

Thats great. Cant wait to hear about the gear swap results. I was only thinking about the drops spindles cuz you added an inch or two to the bottom af the crossmember as well and I wondered just how much room you ended up with under there. Thought it might be sketchy if you crossed a tall speedbump...

With any luck that gearing will allow you to run slightly taller tires (rather than Smaller as you mentioned) and that will get your lowered front end up off the ground a tiny bit. I expect that with those drop spindles you are using, you must cringe at every pothole and large object in your path.....

Thanks for the update! Impressive mileage. I don't think a lower rearend is going to take away from your mileage as your starts now are high-revving and you can't use 5th. Find the right gear ratio and I think you'll be sittin' pretty! I hope so! Just purchased a 4.56 ratio ring and pinion from Jeg...

so mileage and test update- Yesterday I needed to take a fridge down to a rental property in southern CT from RI. I was excited as this was an ideal test run and shake down cruise. I went first to a diesel station, and filled to the brim, then drove down to the property, completed the job, and drove...

couple updates- so ive been tinkering around with power steering on this thing for a bit, and had gone so far as adapting a GM pump to a MB pulley. The GM pump sits low on the driver side and it could have worked If I could line the pulley up properly stock GM http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd3...

great! thanks for the info