We've made a few more upgrades to the truck mostly over the past couple of months!
1) Increased the size of the plates and bolts that are holding the camper to the flatbed. I'm not sure if this was required, but going from the tiny plates to these 1/2" thick, 6"x6" steel plates with 1/2" fine threaded grade 8 bolts is very comforting. I wanted to make sure that if something catastrophic happens, it's not the bolts/plates that fail. I painted them so they wouldn't rust and since they are steel, I also put some rubber tape between it and the aluminum flatbed. The plates are on the top and the bottom sandwiching the camper to the flatbed.
2) Put an air gap between the floor and house batteries. I had to remove the house batteries to get to the drivers side front bolt holding the camper down and there was moisture under the batteries and the wood was damp. I think it's from the batteries heating up/cooling down. So I let it all dry out, painted all of the wood, caulked where needed, and then siliconed two strips of 1/4" plexiglass for the batteries to sit on. That way, there is airflow under the batteries to help prevent moisture build-up.
3) Removed the rear Firestone airbags with Daystar cradles. They were a great temporary solution for us, but since our camper never leaves the truck, I wanted the suspension to be supporting most of the weight rather than a bag of air on the axle. This way, we gained much more up-travel (maybe close to 3"-4") and letting the suspension do what it's suppose to do.
4) Installed 1500lb add-a-leafs, we got about 1" of lift and it definitely helps support the weight of the camper. It was neat to see that by installing these, we were able to remove the airbags.
5) Installed a 1" spacer on the passenger rear and a 2" spacer on the driver's rear to get leveled out side to side (the driver's side sat 1" lower compared to the passenger side) and to bring it back up to factory ride height-ish since we were gaining about 1.5" of lift with the new front coils. We didn't want to be sitting low in the rear with the new front lift and I didn't want the airbags, so without paying for a custom leaf-pack, this was the next best solution for us. If we weren't lifting the front with the new coils, we probably would have just done a 1" spacer on the driver's side to make it level with the passenger.
6) Installed Thuren custom tuned King 2.5 shocks with remote reservoirs on all four corners. These were pretty easy to install, did it all at the house.
7) Installed Thuren front coil springs, these were the hardest part of the install because of the required distance to drop the front axle to get the springs out/in. I'm sure if you had a spring compressor, it would be a bit easier, but I didn't feel like renting one and knew the axle could be dropped enough. I did have to use two jacks to keep lowering the axle and it required to do both sides at the same time. I was hoping to just do one side at a time but once getting into it, I knew that wouldn't work.
8) Installed Thuren track bar, it's definitely a lot beefier than the OEM.
Had the truck aligned and overall, we are very happy. It still drives like a truck but the way I describe it is that every bump is mush softer and it doesn't reverberate through the frame of the truck and make that "chatter" feeling. It also handles turns a lot better now and the side to side rocking when going through uneven turns/dips is controlled much faster. We haven't done a ton of dirt driving yet, but from what we have, it's definitely better...but still a truck with a camper on it!
