How hard is it to lift a 1975 Pontiac?

Its okay, you can laugh, but I want to put a lift on my old beater. I had some old all terrain tires laying around from my jeep and it needed some tires so i put them on it and it looked just delightful in the most redneck sense possible... so now I want to get bigger tires and lift it about 2 feet... and probably paint it flat black.

I'm not sure what you call the type of suspension it has but they're not leaf springs or struts. The front has a single control arm with a coil spring and a shock absorber on the inside. The rear is a solid axle with coils and separate shocks as well.

A lot of people have laughed and mocked my hick-mobile project idea but my beloved old lemans has far to much character to just be left to sit there with its normal looking, minorly rusted everything... so what do you all think?

lift it 2 foot?

don't go round bends..

okay maybe not 2 feet. Lets go with about 10 inches.

Ideas?

Most of the "donk" and "bubble" scene lift similar cars. Maybe not 10 inches, but here are some ideas to get you started.

Using springs you can probably get a couple inches. You'll be very close to the droop limit of the suspension and the camber curve will be way off but it should be alignable. You can use the Donk and Bubble scene to source lift spindles for another 2" or so. You can make or buy body spacers that lift the body another 2" or so off the frame. So far we're up to 6 or more inches.

After that you can probably go with alternate control arms to get some more lift while retaining some travel, but camber and caster curves will be downright crazy.

Just use some caution and moderation if you do this. Here is a sensible quote from Wikipedia about the potential hazards of such hi-risers.

Like other extreme modifications to passenger cars, donks and related vehicles are subject to potential safety hazards and impairment of drivability. Raising a vehicle off of the ground by such a degree raises the center of gravity to a point where rolling the vehicle becomes a distinct possibility. The drive axles of the vehicles were designed for wheels in a specific size range. Putting such large tires and rims on a vehicle may overtorque the drive axles, causing snapping [1] or shearing under high levels of stress, such as hard acceleration. The suspension modifications required are often meant for trucks and larger vehicles. In turning, the weight of the vehicle may shift to extremes that were never considered for the vehicle in question, and may cause loss of traction or damage to the vehicle itself.

Hmmm, yeah, I was thinking about the whole rolling thing actually earlier. I did some measuring earlier and I figure 6 to 8 inches is enough lift... Right now its got 10 inches of clearance (from the ground to the frame). My stock Grand Cherokee has 14, and the neighbors big ass, jacked up rig truck has 25 inches so if I can get it somewhere between my Jeep and that big rig that'd be awesome. Its safe to say I can get an inch or two out of some bigger offroad tires right?

So lets just say I use the methods that yall have suggested and I'm looking to get 8 inches of pure lift out of it (lets the say the stock springs have sagged about 2 inches in the last 30 years and I replace them)...

How much would it cost me if I utilized used parts as much as possible?

Thanks!

I have two words, air shocks :naughty: