Those who own/plan to buy lift spindle, READ!

[What?]

This mod applies to everyone who owns, plan to buy or installing the lift spindles(ANY BRAND LIFT SPINDLES) with stock LCAs. Removing caliper stop will help clear the room for brake caliper on near full-full lock turn on either direction.

Tools I used for the job, you can come up with something else if you do not have available ,may be easier/harder depending on the use of tools.

It only took me about 5 minute per side to do the job with air tools. This may take longer for some as much as 30 minutes.

1. Cutout Wheel
2. Pry Bar
3. Dead blow hammer
3. Jack
4. Jackstand
5. 19mm impact gun (OR tire iron if the tool is unavailable to you)
6. Rubberized paint
7. IMPORTANT! EYE PROTECTION GOGGLES. You only have 1 set of eyes, don't risk losing them!!!

Starting at one side(either driver or passenger's side).

Those using tire iron, loosen the lug nut JUST enough to be able loosen more once on jackstand.

Jack up your truck safely from the side but bit away from the fender so you'll have room to put jack under the frame(before it curves up toward to engine).

Put jack stand underneath, once reach desired height, be sure sit on the ground level properly and lower the jack slowly to ensure safety and into jack stand mount.

Remove lug nuts, tire

Now you can see, I mounted jackstand under the LCA safely but I do not have the picture of how I mount it properly BUT it will not roll off or damage balljoint. The method above will give you clearance under LCA in case you need room for removing brake stop

This is caliper stop that needs to be removed


I already started on the cut with the picture above, and the line you see is stainless steel brake line.

Caliper Stop is held on by rivets, as you can see there are 2. My method of removing them is to cut from above to downward which you can see the picture of where I started with cutout wheel.


When cutting the rivets, BE CAREFUL if the cutout wheel slips, you do not want to hurt yourself or touching brake line, take extra precaution and TAKE YOUR TIME! AS WELL WEARING YOUR EYE GOOGLE PROTECTION!!!!




Its OK to cut the caliper stop its thick that you won't cut through BUT you want to be able go as bit deeper to ensure full cut of rivet.

This is one completely removed and started on the second one.



Now with both removed, you want to grind the surface of where rivets were to a point where you can see light circle line(Left of the hole on the caliper stop)




Now, I take my pry bar and hit it down to loosen the caliper stop toward left as picture shown



NOW you can see more clearly of the circle lines which mean its coming off slowly


That's where I'll use my dead blow hammer and hit it to loosen it, be careful and watch your fingers when doing so

NOW, this is what it should looks like after removing caliper stop completely


Congratulation and hope you didn't lose your eye/s or finger/s over this

Now, you can leave this in since its stuck on pretty well and STILL CLEAR THE BRAKE CALIPER, be sure to paint with rubberized or rust-free paint and clean them out real well before doing so. And personally, I would say to removed them.

You can hit them out with dead blow hammer, it would be also easy to use tap punch to do it much quicker.




Now, you can reinstall tire, hand tighten much you can.

Once on ground, be sure to tighten them star style evenly, and continue to do on another side.

[HP Addict]

well done, thanks for the tutorial, this will come in handy

[sapperb]

hey brutha good write up. Wish I had that info when I put my spindles on over 7 years ago. It cost me over $500 to find out that the steering stops were the issue of my brakes failing.

[snookaholic26]

best post on this whole entire forum. before i knew about this, i almost died on the highway. made a u-turn, thats when the caliper hit the stop and i had no brakes. almost slammed the car in front of me. cut the stops off-problem solved. thanks for savin my life dude!

[89-S-Dime]

I would like to add that the steering stops on the 1st generation (82-93) and 2nd generation (94-05) 2wd S10's are different.


In a side be side comparison you can see the difference between the two LCA.


The LCA on the left is straight from GM is for a 2002 2wd S10 pickup & the LCA on the right is from a 1988 2wd S10 pickup, the lower control arm on the left clearly uses a bigger steering stop.


In this photo you see the brake caliber on the 1st generation just clears the steering stop at full lock.

I personally have not had issues with lift spindles and steering stops on 1st generation S10's however I have always had to grind down the steering stops when installing lift spindles on 2nd generation (94-05) 2wd S10's just so there is no confusion.
When in doupt grind off the steering stops!

[NickB024]

what doas this do exactly? do i need to do this?

[What?]

Quote: Originally Posted by NickB024

what doas this do exactly? do i need to do this?

Read the first paragraph lol.

You can see most will recommend this and as said above, 1st gen has smaller one, you can cut it shorter but fully removed is what give me no issues.

[alarm_the_alarm]

umm would you have to do this with drop spindles also? just wondering....

[twistedsmily]

hey a was woundering if it was necessary to cut the LCA when doing a spindle lift, were the fabtech instructions say to,

[What?]

ONLY caliper stop as shown above, nothing ELSE.