How Much Does a Leveling Kit Cost?
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One of the reasons people buy pickup trucks is to customize them. Pickup trucks are highly customizable and suitable for various types of driving.
One of the commonest customizations done on pickup trucks is to level out the height using a leveling kit. But how much does a leveling kit cost?
Leveling kits come in different sizes and packages, and they cost different amounts. However, the average cost of leveling kits is between $100 and $400. Of course, some kits cost more than $500, it all depends on your choice.
Let’s take a closer look at how much a leveling kit costs.
Table of Contents
What Does a Leveling Kit Do?
Practically, the rear side of every car is raised higher than the front side. A leveling kit raises the front side of a truck to become “level” with the rear.
So, in simple terms, a leveling kit is used to level the height of a pickup truck. This kit raises the front suspension by a few inches, giving you more ground clearance to easily run across rough terrains.
Also, leveling kits come in handy if you plan to use bigger tires on your truck or SUV. The additional suspension clearance offered by leveling kits can customize a standard pickup truck or SUV in several ways. Leveling kits differ by vehicle make and type; this means that you have to be specific when buying a leveling kit.
You can find these kits on virtually any automobile parts reseller or e-commerce website. Installing a leveling kit is quite a difficult task, but you can still do it on your own if you’ve got all of the right equipment.
Having a mechanic or your local truck tuning center do this for you could set you back up to a whopping $1,500 for labor costs alone.
How Much Does a Leveling Kit Cost?
The actual price you will pay for a leveling depends on three major factors, which are:
- Your type of vehicle
- The exact leveling kit you’re going for (these kits are measured in inches).
- Additional packages/tools that may be available as add-ons to the kit.
With these factors in place, a basic leveling kit costs from $100 to $300. Also, leveling kits vary in size, some can lift your car only 2 inches up, while others can lift the car higher. But then, leveling kits are always cheaper than lift kits. Then again, it’s one thing to buy a leveling kit, and it’s another thing to install it.
If you’re going to do the installation yourself, save up to $1,500, which you should have paid for labor costs. But before you try to install a leveling kit yourself, gain the necessary high-level mechanical experience so you don’t mess with your car’s suspension.
Overall, it costs an average of $500 to install a leveling kit yourself and $2,000 to have an expert do it. Leveling kits alter the suspension of your car. Therefore, installing one could void the OEM warranty on your car - this is one of the disadvantages of installing leveling kits.
Implications of Installing a Leveling Kit
You shouldn’t install a leveling kit on a truck you use for hauling or carrying heavy cargo. The reason trucks have a raised rear is so that when you load the bed, the weight of the load would press down the rear side of the truck and level it out with the front for smooth driving.
Now, if you raise the front to the level of the rear and then load the truck’s bed, it’d make the suspension unbalanced with the rear side lower than the front.
So, if you’re going to level out a truck, know that it’d be bad to still use that same truck for hauling heavy loads. But, you can use the truck to carry lightweight cargo.
So basically, the two major implications of leveling your truck are that you can’t use the truck for carrying heavy stuff anymore, and you’d void the OEM warranty.
Even so, there are several advantages - higher suspension, decent enough tire space, sturdier appearance, and so on.
