Lowering a 4x4 Hardbody

[cDANKowens]

I have a 1994 Hardbody I recently purchased. I intend to fix it up a bit and make it an excellent example but I still want to change things up a bit and mod it lightly, or as lightly as I can. The first mod I plan to do is lowering it so it has less roll in corners, makes it slightly sportier and a rarity around where I live. The trick is, it's 4 wheel drive. Before people tell me to sell it and get a 2wd I live in a climate where I need 4wd, if rwd was an option I'd have gotten a Z car or a 240sx.
So with that out of the way, from what I understand I would have to loosen the torsion bars for the front end to drop. Keep in mind I'm not looking to scrape so I hopefully won't be putting too much stress on the front end parts. The rear is a bit of a different story due to the leaf springs being on top of the axle. Now a leaf flip is on the forefront of my plans with either blocks or spring inserts to lower it. Am I missing anything I would have to do? I plan on replacing the shocks with performance shocks I found on rock auto to accommodate for the lowering.

Any help regarding my conundrum is appreciated, happy to be apart of the infamous Nissan family!

[alabama_lowlife]

You can lower the front with torsion bars. The easiest way I can think of to lower the back and maintain function is to swap the rear axle for a 2wd axle. It will already have the leaf spring perches on the bottom of the axle.

[Deerhurst]

I believe foul mouth lowered his rally hardbody on 31s. Hopefully he will comment!

[synbiotic12]

Originally Posted by cDANKowens

I have a 1994 Hardbody I recently purchased. I intend to fix it up a bit and make it an excellent example but I still want to change things up a bit and mod it lightly, or as lightly as I can. The first mod I plan to do is lowering it so it has less roll in corners, makes it slightly sportier and a rarity around where I live. The trick is, it's 4 wheel drive. Before people tell me to sell it and get a 2wd I live in a climate where I need 4wd, if rwd was an option I'd have gotten a Z car or a 240sx.
So with that out of the way, from what I understand I would have to loosen the torsion bars for the front end to drop. Keep in mind I'm not looking to scrape so I hopefully won't be putting too much stress on the front end parts. The rear is a bit of a different story due to the leaf springs being on top of the axle. Now a leaf flip is on the forefront of my plans with either blocks or spring inserts to lower it. Am I missing anything I would have to do? I plan on replacing the shocks with performance shocks I found on rock auto to accommodate for the lowering.

Any help regarding my conundrum is appreciated, happy to be apart of the infamous Nissan family!

if you do a spring under swap you'll lower the truck roughly 6" that's a HUGE amount.
You'll completely ruin the rear pinion angle aswell as the driveshaft will be much too long so keep that cost in mind.

as for the front you certainly can turn the torsion bars down but unfortunately that will make the spring rate softer because you have less spring tension. That will result in a more floaty ride and even more body roll. In order to achieve your goal you'd have to re-index the torsion bars in the anchors to retain your spring rate.

If you want less body roll I recommend installing a rear sway bar.

[willkroeger72]

I was also wondering the same thing. could you swap the 4x4 leaf springs with 2wd leafs?

[Deerhurst]

Leafs themselves should be the same. One is spring over vs spring under as said above.

[Foul_Mouth]

Sorry for getting to this late.

We dropped the front using torsions and flipped over 3" lift arms. The rear frame was z'd.

[willkroeger72]

What do you mean by the rear frame was z'd?

[Foul_Mouth]

We cut the truck in half and repositioned the back half.

[street_rulerr]

do an under axle swap with the springs. I can never remember but i THOUGHT they were over axle. if they arent just get a thicker block to hang the rear springs lower