If you are looking for a quick way to improve the look and ride of your '99-'06 Chevy Silverado 1500, consider a leveling kit. Designed to increase the front ride height while also improving overall ride quality and allowing fitment of bigger tires, a leveling kit is virtually a no-brainer modification for late-model fullsize truck owners. Sure, you could crank up the torsion bars to attain additional ride height, but doing so will ruin your ride quality and accelerate front-end parts wear significantly. Fortunately, Off Road Unlimited offers an affordable solution to this dilemma.
Off Road Unlimited worked exclusively with Bilstein to create vehicle-specific replacement shocks that would improve on-road handling while also improving performance in the dirt. Each shock features Bilstein's monotube high-gas-pressure design for consistent fade-free performance and long life. Bilstein and ORU developed valving that helps increase damping control over the factory shocks-ideal for larger tire and wheel packages. The kit came with a shock for each corner as well as all the necessary mounting hardware.
Installation of the ORU kit involves having the truck lifted with the front tires off the ground, so you may want to think twice about doing it yourself in your own driveway. A special torsion-bar clamp tool is also necessary to de-tension each of the torsion bars, but typically these are available through any GM parts dealer. In our case, we tackled the install at a friend's home shop, and simply borrowed the tool from another friend with a 4x4-related business. All said and done, it took us a little over two hours to complete the process from start to finish.
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With the newly improved stance, the truck felt confident as we drove into corners at speed. We didn't feel any headlight adjustments were required after the leveling kit was installed, though you should always check this, as sometimes they may require adjustment. The new larger tires ran smooth and quiet for their size, and the speedometer only read 3 mph off of what our GPS showed. Speedo recalibration kits are available via the aftermarket to restore accurate speedo readings. In the end, the owner of our donor truck was extremely pleased with the upgrades, and commented that he wished he'd performed them sooner.
