One of the best parts about owning a truck is being able to customize, personalize, and modify it. Trucks are the ultimate vehicle for customization, in part because there are so many different options for modification. Some of those options improve the truck’s performance, some of them increase the vehicle’s practicality, and some help make your truck look better than ever. Many customizations do two or all three of those things.
One of the most common modifications that’s done to trucks is the addition of a lift kit. Lift kits have been around for a very long time, and have been popular ever since they first came out. They’re beloved by truck owners in large part because of how cool and intimidating they can make your vehicle seem, but they also can have a strong positive impact for drivers who are into offroading or who use their truck as a work vehicle.
Naturally, those benefits come with some drawbacks. As great as truck lift kits are, they also have a negative impact on some elements of drivability and car performance. Here’s everything you need to know about lift kits and the downsides to consider.
What is a Lift Kit?
A lift kit is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a kit that lifts your truck up into the air. Anytime that you’re driving and see a truck that looks taller than a normal truck, then it likely has a lift kit installed in it.
Lift kits serve a few different purposes:
- A lift kit that impacts the vehicle’s suspension will make a truck better suited for offroading, and more capable of taking on tough terrain and obstacles.
- Lift kits increase the amount of clearance in the truck, making it easier to avoid obstacles, which is helpful if you’re offroading or driving around a job site.
- You can also fit larger tires on a truck that has a lift kit which, in turn, makes it even better for offroading.
- Because trucks that have been lifted are higher off the ground, you’ll have greater visibility of the road when driving, which is a big perk to many drivers.
- And it goes without saying that lifted trucks simply look awesome, and give your car a whole lot more character.
And because of all these features, adding a lift kit to your truck is likely to boost its resale value by quite a bit.
How Does a Lift Kit Work?
There are two different types of lift kits, and they work in different ways. The best kind of lift kit is a suspension lift kit. With a suspension lift kit, the height of the truck’s suspension is quite literally increased. As a result, the entire vehicle is lifted further up from the wheels than it normally would be. There’s basically no limit to how big of a suspension lift you can do, as it’s all based on adding height to the suspension, but anything more than six inches tends to need significant and costly modifications.
A less practical but cheaper – and therefore more common – type of lift kit is the body lift kit. With a body lift kit, the body of the vehicle is detached from the frame, and spacers are installed. The body is then reattached to the frame at a taller height than it used to be. Because body lift kits don’t increase the height of the frame, they don’t offer nearly as many practical benefits as suspension lift kits do. They’re primarily for aesthetics, and there’s a limit to how high you can lift a truck with a body lift kit.
Impact of Lift Kits
While lift kits are positive additions to trucks, they do come with a few drawbacks, most notably to the performance of the vehicle. Perhaps the most important area that’s impacted is the speed of your truck. Adding a lift kit won’t impact the straight line speed, but it should impact how fast you’re willing to drive your truck. Lifting a truck raises the center of gravity for the vehicle, which means it’s not going to be as stable. This is especially true if you have a body lift kit, because there’s no alterations in the vehicle to compensate for the change in center of gravity. With a suspension lift kit, the fact that the entire vehicle is lifted up, rather than just the body, helps the truck adjust to the higher center of gravity. But still, even with a suspension lift kit, your truck won’t be as stable at high speeds, and won’t be able to take turns as quickly or as comfortably as before.
Another area that can be impacted is towing capacity. In general, a body lift kit doesn’t particularly impact the towing capacity of a truck, but a suspension lift kit does. Because a suspension lift kit is lifting the entire vehicle off the axles and wheels, the hitch will no longer be at the standard height. In order to do any towing, you’ll need to install a drop hitch in your truck, which lowers the hitch to the standard towing height. This, however, changes the physics of towing, and decreases the total load that you can tow in your truck.
Finally, lift kits can have an impact on the gas mileage that you get while driving your truck. A body lift will likely have a negligible impact on fuel consumption. Lifting the body adds extra surface area to your truck, which decreases aerodynamics, but only by a tiny bit. If you use the additional space to install larger tires, your truck will weigh more, and get marginally worse mileage. But you might notice that you lose a few miles per gallon with a suspension lift kit. A suspension lift – especially a sizable one – can greatly decrease how aerodynamic your truck is, enough to have it impact fuel mileage. Larger suspension lifts also result in larger tires, and often they have a deep offroading tread that is not conducive to getting good mileage on the highway or freeway. Combined with more unsprung weight, your powertrain needs to put out more effort to get everything spinning. Between the aerodynamics and the tires, you might experience a pretty notable drop in fuel efficiency.
Those are the performance downsides to lifting your truck, but for most people, the pros outweigh the cons. If you’re shopping for a lift kit, 4 Wheel Parts has parts and kits for virtually every make and model from popular brands, all backed by the manufacturer’s warranty.
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