Topic: Newbie Needs Help with new Lowered 04 Avy

[MyBigToy]

I would guess you could crank the keys to raise the truck back up 1" but, as Blue indicated, lowering keys aren't the ideal way to go due to a sh!tty ride. Looking at the space between the front bump stop and the control arm shows plenty of space so you aren't bottoming out there.

If you did that, you could also buy a 3/4" Daystar coil spring spacer for the back. I really doubt your springs are shot; 64k miles isn't a lot of miles. That is, unless they are some off-brand, non-tempered crap springs. I think they might be Hotchkis springs; I just put a set of their 1.5" lowering springs on my Cadillac CTS and they were gray.

One thing you might take a look at is to pull the shocks out, especially in the rear, and see if they are shot. I know I've seen some complaints before about Nitro shocks not lasting a long time.

When I originally did the 3" drop on the rear I only did the coil springs and kept the original Z71 Bilstein shocks. It rode like crap, partly because of the lack of shorter dogbones for the antisway bar but also partly because of compressing the shock more than it was designed for. All of those problems were solved when I added the shock drop brackets, shorter antisway bar dogbones, and rear trailing arm drop brackets (although I also replaced the Bilsteins all the way around at the same time because they were totally shot). I decided it was better to go with a shock drop bracket and maintain stock-length shocks rather than lose suspension travel by going with a shorter shock.