Body Lift VS. Suspension Lift
March 31, 2021
If you're looking to lift your truck, you have a couple of options. Today, we're going to look at both a body lift and a suspension lift and tell you what we'd recommend for your new project.
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1. Suspension Lift
We'll start off by talking about suspension lifts. This type of lift utilizes all of the suspension components in order to lift the truck. This will ensure that your frame and all of the other components of your truck are lifted as well. Typically a suspension lift will include things like cross members, new shocks, drop brackets, cv spacers, and a few other things too.
When picking out your suspension lift, you have a lot of different options as far as brands and the components that come in each kit. If you're wanting a suspension lift without breaking the bank, check out Rough Country. They produce a quality lift kit at an affordable price. Want the best performance? Brands like BDS Suspension will transform both the look and feel of your truck drastically, but they are quite a bit more expensive.
2. Body Lift
A body lift does just what the name suggests. This type of lift simply lifts the body of your truck off of the frame. This is done by placing lift blocks or spacers below the body of the truck but on top of the frame. This results in the desired lift but doesn't lift any other components of the truck so you don't actually gain any ground clearance.
One benefit of the body lift is that it's inexpensive. You can typically find a body lift for around $300. This is the most cost-effective way to lift your truck but there are some drawbacks to this type of lift.
3. Which is Better?
We can say without a doubt that we would buy a suspension lift over a body lift any day. While we do sell body lifts on our site, we usually don't recommend them and there are a few reasons why. First, since body lifts don't raise any other components of your truck, you don't actually gain any ground clearance. This lift also puts extra stress on the suspension, drivetrain, and electronic components of your truck.
Trucks that have a lot of electronic controls can suffer steering loss because the computer isn't able to decipher how much the steering wheel is turning since all of the suspension is now angled. Finally, some trucks that have parts mounted to the frame can look pretty strange when you lift the body. Certain generations of the Ram have an issue that keeps the exhaust in its normal position when the rest of the body gets lifted.
This results in your exhaust hanging like three inches below your bumper. Other trucks like the Silverado have the bumper mounted to the frame so when you lift the body, you get this huge gap between where the tailgate ends and the bumper starts.
Overall, we'd recommend a suspension lift simply because it's a lot safer, gives you more ground clearance, looks better, and puts less strain on your truck. While it's more expensive than a body lift, all of these things combined make up for the cost and are well worth it.
