I'll be honest. I had almost the whole thing typed up and my Mozilla crashed. You're probably getting the sub par write up of the two right now. Anyway.

Ok, so the reason for me doing this is that I'm on 3.5" of lift and stock length shocks right now. Far from optimal, as you could guess. I will likely do a similar thing in the rear, but it won't be quite the same for obvious reasons.

You will need the following tools:

A welder, absolutely required.
Chop saw or angle grinder. Maybe a hack saw would work... eventually.
Socket set
Knife
Flat head screwdriver.

Alright, now to start. Begin by removing your shock towers. You'll want to remove the intake and pop the coolant overflow tank up and out of your way. Then remove the two 18mm shock bolts. After those are out, remove the eight 13mm shock tower nuts and pull the shock towers up and out the top. They should come relatively easily. On the passengers side you will have to cut the wiring harness zip tie mount. I did not include the mount in the finished version, but you could easily just drill a hole if you wanted it.

Now it's time to take your shock towers over to your chop saw. As I have done here, you will want to cut both right on the weld. When you go to re-weld them that will give you the most surface area to work with.



I would like to note, while I was doing this: my pants were too short, I was wearing slip on shoes, and I had no socks on. Don't do that. Wear socks. Your feet will thank you when the sparks go flying.



You may have to cut most of the way through, rotate, and then finish cutting. I had to. Be sure to keep your cut as straight as possible.



Once you've got your tops cut off take a tape measure and something to mark with. Decide how much shorter you want your towers to be and mark to cut that much out. Since I'm lifted 3.5", I decided to cut out 2.5" and add taller shocks later.



Now back to the chop saw and it's time to cut again.



I know I'm using more but necessary, but my dad snapped these action shots while I wasn't looking and I really like the look of them a lot.



Alright, now you're done with the cutting. Throw away or scrap the middle pieces you're removing. Now take a file and clean up your cuts on the pieces you're keeping. If you kept your cuts pretty straight then they should sit together and line up pretty nicely.



Now it's time to pull out the welder. Be sure to wear everything you need to keep yourself protected from the UV light, spatter, and above all don't flash yourself if you can help it. But of course, you already knew all of that if you own a welder.



Don't judge me for my ugly welds. I'm still new. If you stick the shock bolts back in the top they make a great ground point. Weld up all around, smack it on the ground a few times to make sure it will hold, if it holds then you're golden. This isn't a load bearing piece anyway, at least not most of the time.



And here they are compared to the height of the stock towers.



Also be sure to paint up your welds inside the tower and out. This is an area that water and salt will very likely get and, of course, the welds will rust like crazy pretty easily.

Here is one of them reinstalled. I highly recommend turning them so that they bolt head is toward the inside of the engine bay. It makes installation and removal of the bolt a million times easier.



And now you're done. Reintall and tighten everything down. For the rears I will likely use the tops off of my original set of shock towers. I plan to notch cut them and weld them to the rear axles if I can. I was originally going to just cut and lower the top shock mounts, but they are welded in in such a way that that would be quite difficult. I believe this new plan will work as long as the shock will not come into contact with the spring plate. We will see some time in the coming weeks. If you've got any questions then feel free to ask.

Also be sure to go down to my signature and follow the link to check out all my other write ups and several other write ups by others that I like a lot.

 

very well done, thats how things used to be done.
Today its pick up the phone and buy a new set.

wielding will get better with time.

 

"not load bearing"

If your shocks are blown, yes...you are correct. If your shocks are valved properly, there is a good amount of force being repetitively hammered at the mounts. Ugly welds work too, they just need penetration.

 

Thanks drow, I hate buying stuff when I can just modify something I've already got. It wastes money and gives me one more thing I don't want to have laying around.

ZG, the shocks are relatively worn out. There's some pressure, just not a ton. There was plenty of penetration though, it's just not pretty.

 

Nice write up and great idea. Mozilla be darned.

 

Silly question. When buying shocks to match lifted springs, are they simply versions of this, or do they have a different travel amount compared to standard etc?

Ie, what's different here, apart from the cut n shut method of doing it.

 

This is a great idea if you are adding a lift and don't have funds for longer shocks. A lift will in essence, change your centering point of your stock shocks. Then you will loose the rebound distance thus bottoming out the shocks and have premature failure of the shocks.
I found this out the hard way, on a truck. Cranked up the torsion bars on front end of 2500 chevy truck to level and clear larger tires, and destroyed 2 sets of Bilstein shocks before learning that I either need longer shocks or in my case i could buy the adapters that moved the bottom shock up to restore its proper place. The next shocks are still on the truck.

 

Thanks Charlie.

Cap, yea, it's pretty much the same thing. With longer shocks you might get a very small amount of increased travel, but it would only be a very small percentage of the length increase.

Thanks Joe, that's pretty much where I'm at. I really need to do the rears too. They top out all the time, pretty much over every speed bump and through a lot of bumps. It's really bad.

 

I know it's an old post but did you get the rear done? Looking to do mine.