Icon waaa waaaa waaaaa

yet.... mwahahahaha

lmk when you are tho (asking for a friend)

 

Aww jay how sweet. Are you buying me a cross brace for Valentines Day...

 

too late... V day is almost over, maybe next year. plus it'll take a bit more than an OTPHJ for that...

 

I can't. Icons top hat design makes just enough of the tip stick through to where the DD brackets won't comfortably fit.

 

Good to know.

 

Genius. Ordered.

 

Stolen from another thread. I've yet to see one instance where someone posted something similar with Kings up front. There are more I've read about too. I don't care about the failure rate, or whether the customer service was "quick" to get a new top hat out. The couple hundred bucks extra to avoid the potential hassle of having my truck down for 2+ weeks while I wait for new hats is worth it to me. Not to mention the money I could potentially have to shell out for trail side recovery or other damage as a result of failure.

 

So I guess what you are saying is I should expect my coilovers to blow up in 5 years externally? Well shit I might as well start gusseting the fuck out of my coil buckets now for when my coils explode.

This shit is retarded, I doubt many would consider coilovers if there was an expectancy of them literally shearing themselves in a matter of a few years. Im not surprised by these comments though, this member has a habit of stirring shit up.

Coot

 

Well damn Chris, could you explain more about the photo. I figured Icon must of had some sort of presence racing as they do make some LT coils. Im not surprised in the least by that photo though which further reiterates my stance...they may not have a need for professional development yet in their shocks for the racing dudz.

Coot

 

Thanks Chris for the breakdown. Def says a lot to me then. Glad I got kings.

Coot

 

I think people have to consider there are two very different markets here.

One is LT, racing or other hard core off roading. If you are going this route you don't give a piss about highway handling and you are likely going to spend weeks putting together a mixture of components you feel is just perfect for your particular application. Either you have the knowledge to do this yourself or you outsource it to one of many shops that do this kind of work. You certainly haven't even thought for a second of having an OME nitrocharger anywhere near your vehicle.

The second is MT, camping or so called expedition builds. User probably wants a bit of lift, dealing with a heavy build and would like to take rough roads at decent speed. They are not however doing a high speed run along whoops because regardless of how beefy their suspension components are they would blend the entire contents of their cooler/refrigerator, shake their camper to bits and launch their dog into the headliner. Many of these users have in fact started with a nitrocharger and found it lacking looking to upgrade.

I've felt that Fox/King clearly cater best to the first market. Now those same components obviously answer the second market too. As many pointed out the cost delta is small to nil compared to Icon so why would the second market go with Icon in some cases? To me it comes down to convenience more than anything. You can easily find a few different MT Icon kits that you can reliably install without worrying about coil binding, wrong bump stops, needing limit straps and so forth. You can talk to Icon and they will provide part numbers and vendors that are "designed" or "tuned" for typical Tacoma MT setups. Maybe those claims are marketing BS, but bottom line there are part numbers and kits meant for easy "just works" bolt on installs from Icon.

Now of course you can get a Fox or King setup nearly identical to any of those Icon MT setups and even valve them to match Icon digressive valving if you wanted to. It would however take a lot of research to do and you won't get much of any help from Fox or King in doing so (though plenty of knowledgeable shops would know what to do).

Having spent gobs of time looking at suspension crap for my build a couple years ago this was what I observed reading endless threads and builds on more than one forum. If you are really going to do LT and off road hard be prepared to do your homework or pay a shop for their expertise and best go King or Fox. On the other hand if you want MT and easy then Icon is really attractive. Of course King/Fox could be setup to match but it just isn't turn-key the way a camping/expo builder can go to Wheelers or some place and order a setup they know will just bolt on and work. Lots of happy expo builders with Icon but of course they are unlikely to wheel in a way that would crack a top hat.

 

There is a reason for this. Icon is a complete suspension manufacturer not just shocks. They manufacture complete suspension systems including shocks, arms, springs, secondary systems, bracketry etc etc. King and Fox cater to the race market with the OEM applications as a secondary. As such the R&D times they devote to the OEM market aren't even close to what Icon does. Take a look at Icon's Raptor RXT system for example. They developed (through tons of R&D) a bolt in application for those trucks, (including a custom spring pack) that yielded 15" of wheel travel without having to make any permanent modifications to the truck. At the time most Raptor SUA or cantilever systems were showing about the same numbers. They are now working on the same systems for the Tacoma and Tundra. They were also the first company to have a bolt on rear bump setup for the Tacomas, the first to recognize that the Tacoma could run different stroke shocks if an upper arm was installed etc etc and that is just the Tacoma platform...

Long story short, Icon caters to the OEM replacement market as their primary focus. King is race vehicles first, Fox who knows, but with their lead times as of late its certainly not the OEM market. They also do not make a shock larger than a 3.0 currently which is why Geiser Bros doesnt use any of their product. A TT will generally run a 3.0 C/O and a 4.5" Bypass so kind of an unfair comparison.

That being said, off the top of my head: Tom Wayes, Jeremy Mcgrath, Randy Merritt, Brock Heger, Eric Barron all run Icons.

 

I don't have a dog in this "fight" because my Fox suspension hasn't been put through it's paces (everything was back ordered until a day into my last adventure -- but @HeadStrong Off-Road handled everything for me!) and has spent almost it's entire life on-road. With that said...

I went with Fox because of their reputation in shock building. Bikes, dirt rigs, race trucks...all of them. They know how to build shocks. I didn't really consider Kings, and in retrospect I'm not really sure why, but I've had experience with Fox shocks and never a bad one. I agree that there are different markets and different brands appeal to those different markets, but I don't think it's any harder to get Fox shocks and have them revalved to your specific needs IF you even feel it necessary.

Like @chris4x4 said, they're not so much catered towards direct OE replacement. You can't get Fox leaf springs or AALs as far as I know. They do one thing and they do it really well. I don't mind finding 3-4 companies that each do one thing really well and putting all the pieces together. Total Chaos has built a (mostly) bulletproof UCA and luckily Headstrong had a package with the TC UCAs and Fox suspension for me. Icon will package their own, but again, they're doing multiple things and trying to do them all really well.

 

Def some great stuff here for a good breakdown in regards to the mentality. Is Icon that more prevalent in common online distributors than fox or king? I guess I wouldn't know much in the "off-forum" route since I got my contacts through here...wheelers, DSM, and headstrong which all sell King as well.

I ask this strictly because I am not familiar with the advantages of Icon over any other coilover...but are they really easy to tune? I know with King you pretty much just have a spring rate and a punch to adjust. Does Icon offer more than that in terms of MT adjustability?

Coot

 

You can get all three through online vendors. But for Icon you'll find parts and kits directly designed and marketed for bolt on OEM replacement. For Fox/King you tend to be left trying to figure out what parts you need to put together and then often can't even find things like compressed/extended length measurements. So again not really availability being the issue but for someone looking for a no fuss no muss easy component selection and install Icon is easier.

Again the point is Icon is supposedly "tuned" for your OE installation. Icon claims to have gone and done the research to set up a particular valving for some sort of "best" ride on a Tacoma. So you shouldn't need to worry about tuning it. The King approach is that any serious racing vehicle is going to be tuned to the vehicle and application by the team doing test runs and tweaking the shocks so there is no point in them doing any research into a "default" tuning. As far as I understand Fox/King/Icon all can be valved to essentially match each other though there are a bunch of people here who should know if there are any particular limitations.

@tubbsisland said it better than me. Icon targets the OE bolt on market and is suppose to be doing all the R&D to provide easy solutions to that market. King is focused on a market that is already going to custom tune every shock for every truck.

 

Thanks man for the info in answering what I was asking. I guess from a shock standpoint, is it that easy to convert a progressive shock to a digressive style or would that require different valving? That would make sense though as I forget that Icon has their "stage" kits out there which is a straight bolt on application for most of the front end depending on the stage build.

Coot

 

Icons top hat revision came when they released their resi option to allow for a longer shock to be utilized and out of the way fitting routing but that is not the issue here nor is their revision the reason why these fail.

Take a look at the picture below.



You can clearly see marks in the anodizing from the 2 most forward bolts putting pressure on the top hat, but the third bolt (point of failure) is oddly missing any sort of wear pattern around the hole? What this tells me is that upon installation this back bolt was likely not completely seated or torqued to spec, nor was it ever re-torqued or checked over time. I would guess that over time and repeated abuse this bolt backed out and created the point of failure seen in this picture. Its something we see a lot on non professional installations because that back bolt is a huge PITA to get to and even worse to torque correctly. I'm willing to bet that is you looked at the other side of the truck the back bolt is either loose, backed out or not there at all.

We have seen this failure before and it is either the issue above or from running too much preload on the coil causing coil bind and unfortunately an un-gussetted Tacoma coil bucket is weaker than the coil and fails first. But seeing that the coil bucket also failed I do have some questions about when and how this failure happened.