I'm super excited about this.

Normally I don't teardown things this size or, you know, expensive, but this should be

really fun.

I have an Icon Stage 9 lift kit, and we're going to remove a huge chunk of the factory

suspension and replace it with these aftermarket components.

Let's get started.

[Intro]

So the reason people add lifts to their truck, or I guess my reason why I'm lifting my truck

is just to get a little bit more performance than the stock vehicle.

So most vehicles are designed so they can be used on the freeway because that's where

it's going to spend, you know, 99% of it's life.

I like things that are practical and useful in a more broad spectrum.

So having a lift on my truck allows me to go off-road and have more performance if I

ever do need to go off of, you know, a paved road.

So we have the truck lifted up off the ground a little bit so we can get those tires off

and start working on the suspension.

If you're...when I first started my YouTube channel I was doing more automotive and car

repairs.

And the reason my whole channel exists is because of this guy: BriansMobile1.

We're in his shop today and he's going to be helping me out a little bit.

[Brian] Alright, step one: get rid of the wheel.

[Zack] So it's interesting that I've had this truck for about 6,000 miles and there's already

some rust on some of the bolts inside.

And rust is not a good thing when it comes to cars, it makes things seize up inside.

So we're going to wire brush that off really quick and that will give us easier access

to remove some of the components.

So we're replacing some of the suspension on the truck and we're going to show the majority

of the passenger side right now.

The passenger and the driver's side are pretty similar.

I'll kind of explain a little bit what each component does as we're going through the

lift.

So that sway bar that we just disconnected, it wraps up and goes all the way through the

front of the truck and attaches to the other tire.

[Brian] Basically what that does is it connects the wheels and the frame and everything in

such a way that you don't get body roll.

This is what body roll looks like: if you go around the corner it would lay to the side.

And that's fine for an off-road vehicle, but on the highway you don't want to be doing

this on the freeway on-ramp.

[Zack] So the sway bar keeps the body of the truck from swaying side to side.

It keeps everything stable.

[Brian] So this is a tapered bolt and it goes through this in such a way that it really

gets stuck.

To get them undone what I like to do it put some shock through it.

So now they're not tight – we won't be pulling on them hard.

[Zack] So obviously with a project like this there are a lot of dangers.

So the truck is supported in multiple locations.

And we're taking special precautions not to damage the brake lines because if the brake

lines break during this process, it adds another level of complexity that we don't want to

deal with right now.

So to keep stress off of this brake line right here...this brake hose, we have a jack stand

supported up underneath here on this knuckle, and that's keeping the weight from breaking

that hose up there.

My truck is brand new, I've only had it for 3 months, and there's already rust on some

of the bolts inside.

The last time I did this was on like a '95 Jeep Wrangler, and that was a nightmare.

Some of bolts had seized up so much that I had to just sawzall through them and remove

the part, you know, with the bolt still intact with the metal joined together.

[Brian] Hooray, now I can turn it however I want.

[Zack] If we were to just hit this with a hammer it might damage the threads, so we

put a castle nut over the top like this, and then it gave us a flat surface to hit the

hammer on without damaging the actual threads themselves.

A little trick of the trade.

And like always, it's a really good idea to keep your screws organized during the whole

process.

So up at the top of the shock there are three bolts with a 14 millimeter....with a 14 millimeter

nut attached to it.

So we're going to pop those out and that allows the whole shock assembly to drop out from

the housing that it's in.

[Brian] So with the tie rod off, we can manipulate it to turn right or left with ease.

So if you turn it like this, I can lift it up and out.

Turn it back the other way, slide it out.

[Zack] Alright, so this is the shock we just took out.

You can kind of see this housing inside that has like, you know, a bunch of gas and oil

inside of it.

And that's kind of what makes a smooth ride when you're driving your car or your truck...whatever

vehicle you have.

It also has this huge spring on it.

Now Icon was nice enough to send me out one of their lift kits.

This is a Stage 9 from my truck, and you can see that the inside reservoir first of all

is super beefy.

And it has an external reservoir as well.

So when you're going off-road and there are, you know bumps and stuff in the road, and

your shock is fully extended, it still has enough dampening oil and fluid inside of this

to give you a smooth ride.

Now the vast majority of people will never ever need that because most cars spend 99%

of their lives on paved roads.

But since my truck is useful and has features, I want it to be able to go off-road, and that

extra fluid and stuff and the shocks gives a smoother ride off-road when you're crawling

or just, you know, going on roads that aren't paved.

[Brian] So that reserve reservoir is going to mount to this bracket.

So with this out of the way we can get this into place just like that.

[Zack] Alright, so this is the upper control arm.

It's kind of like this u-shaped thing right here.

And we're replacing that to give, you know, more travel to the shock.

So that bolt we were working on inside with the upper control arm...that needs to come

out through like underneath the hood.

[Brian] So we've got an air conditioning line that's in the way, a little wire harness,

so we got to unmount this so that it can flex out of the way.

With the bolt out of the way, now we can get a little bit of movement on it.

You don't want to grease it, but you can certainly move it to clear the path for the bolt.

[Zack] Now this bolt right here we're making progress.

Look at that thing.

Perfect!

Got it!

To make enough room for that bolt to come out, we had to bend on that little side wall

right there.

[Brian] Just flex it on the body mounts.

[Zack] A little bit of aggressive persuasion.

[Brian] In order to get the reservoir bracket in there, you have to take out this plastic

tab.

If you push on it, you can see that it's not steel at all.

Looks like it's part of the stamping of the frame, but it's not.

There we go.

The irony is that there's already tape right there, so we just complete it.

So with those plastic clips gone, the reserve reservoir brackets are going to fit nice and

flush against the frame.

[Zack] Alright, so this one is for the passenger side, which is the side of the vehicle we

are working on.

[Brian] Get it up in the top as far as you can and then just use a pry bar to get it

the rest of the way.

I would recommend leaving this undone and bolting the top first.

It makes it a lot easier to get those 3 bolts in the top.

Blue holds things in place through vibration without being too aggressive.

And it also coats this.

This is steel and it has some kind of anodized coating on it.

But anytime you put steel into aluminum, it's good to have something on it.

So once you get the first one in, you can let it hang by that and it will help to line

the other ones up.

So I don't tighten it all the way until I've got all 3 bolts in place.

If you get a bunch on one side as you twist it in, it'll get around the other sides too.

And the beauty of doing it this way is you can fit a pry bar underneath it here and get

yours up and down and forward and back pretty easy.

But these are tough otherwise.

Then go back through by hand and snug them up good.

Alright, so the bolt goes from the back side towards the front, to support the shock it

goes in really easy.

I like to have this side straight and then have this one angled up just a little bit.

And you put the straight side on first where the bolt's going to go.

[Zack] Stick this massive bolt over here.

So the best way to get this in from underneath the hood was we had to put the washer and

then this metal bit right here on top of the bolt first, and then that allowed the angle

to get through this other hole and then feed through the entire control arm out the other

side.

We had to get a little creative with tapping the end of the bolt from underneath the hood

after that washer and metal bit were on, and then it sank all the way through the rest

of the control arm.

Alright, so the upper control arm is here, and we're going to attach this bottom part

with this massive nut.

Do you remember the sway bar?

Right below that is something called the tie rod, and this is what is attached to your

steering wheel, and it moves the steering knuckle.

It's what makes your wheels go back and forth as you're driving your car.

So we're going to take that, pop it up back into this hole where it came from, put the

castle nut over top.

So the reason they call it a castle nut is because it has these little pillars, you know,

like a castle looks like.

So we're going to stick this pin all the way through this whole.

Once that pin is in, and make sure that the nut is not ever going to spin, because when

you're moving your steering wheel back and forth, everything is constantly moving, and

that will keep things secure.

So this bracket right there, the sway arm needs to be offset a little bit from where

it was before, so included with the Icon Stage 9 kit is one of these offset brackets, so

we're going to go ahead and plop this into place.

Basically this uses the original bolt holes inside of the frame and then gives us new

bolt holes to mount the sway bar to.

And that reservoir bracket is between the spacer and the frame.

[Brian] You'll notice we've got the rubber splash guard between the bracket and this.

That helps to reduce any potential for noise.

[Zack] So in order to mount the reserve reservoir we had to cut a few slits inside a splash

guard for the clamps and then we can slide the reserve reservoir through the clamps and

then tighten them down.

This part right here is attached to the sway bar, it's called a sway bar link.

We're going to toss it through here and then we're pretty much done once I can get this

tightened in.

We have the reservoir, we have the top control arm, we have the shock in place.

Not too bad.

Take a look at the hardware.

I think that looks sick.

One thing about these lift kits is that they're adjustable.

So I can go all the way down and have it basically to like the stock height, or I can raise it

up along all of these threads and getting more clearance as the spring gets more and

more compressed down the shaft.

The higher we go lift-wise, like the more you compress that spring, the stiffer the

ride is going to be, but the more clearance you'll have from the ground.

Which depending on what you're doing, if you're doing a lot of freeway riding you don't need

a lot of clearance, but if you're off-road most of the time, I need to clear like boulders

and hills or whatever, give yourself a higher point of gravity, a higher center of gravity,

then it's nice to have a higher truck.

Alright, everything is mounted and in place.

All of the bolts are snug and tight.

We have the skid plate stuck back on along with the sway bar underneath that.

So we'll get the tire put back in and we'll be good to go.

Alright so the front tires are done, but believe it or not there are 4 tires on a truck and