New England B.S. Thread

I do have the 6112s and like them a lot. No comparison to the stock Bilsteins, as you would imagine.

 

@Cativelense wife is out so no family visit so how's Saturday morning sound? Send me a location and the earliest time that works for you and I will be there, possibly with one of the pups lol

 

Honestly I don't think I would ever have said this before, spacers in the front, AAL and spacer in the back. Cheap as dirt and purely cosmetic.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Seriously, if I'm looking to get between 2.5 - 3", I should also add UCAs too. It looks like LR would be the ones if I needed them.

 

UCA's are going to add a couple hundred to your cost. Also need to include cost for installation, alignment, and whatever else you might need to do to get it to drive good. I have seen other people get away with factory UCA's and a lift and still be able to get proper alignment on the forum though

 

I got steered away with 5100s with no dampening. Those things were quite stiff on my 1st gen. Im going with ET icons, uniball icas, dakkars or locally made, scs steaths with 285 kmtwos

 

Up to you man. Saturday morning works for me if it works for you. We can meet anywhere you want. How familiar with the are are you? We can even meet at my house if you want. Whatever works Jason.

 

F: Eibach 112-620 / Bilstein 5100 @ 0.85 / Toytec 1/4" Spacer
R: Icon AAL on TSB 4-leaf, overload removed, Bilstein 5100
T : BF Goodrich All-Terrain KO (non-KO2) 265/75-16, ~20,000 miles on them

Springs were from Toytec, Icon AAL and 5100s from DSM. I think I had maybe $700 into the setup.

Here's my measurements with the ARB installed and the stock TRD OR 2+1 non-TSB springs

Before:
Front Left - 20" hub to fender
Front Right - ~20" hub to fender
Rear Left - 21.5" hub to fender
Rear Right - ~ 21.5" hub to fender

After:
Front Left - 22" hub to fender
Front Right - 22.5" hub to fender
Rear Left - ~24.5" hub to fender
Rear Right - ~25" hub to fender.

I did run into the front diff rumble and had BostonBilly help me with the ECGS bushing. By help I mean I tore the front end apart again and he did the gruntwork of putting it in because I was terrified of doing it myself.

This is the sole photo I have with my cap on, so it's not a good side angle to show the height.



Sometimes the truck didn't even look lifted, other times it would.

Case in point, the lead photo almost looks stock to me, but here the truck looks much higher than stock :



EDIT #2:

I had OEM UCAs and my caster was low, but I never found it wandered on the highway. I also still had my front sway bar in place and thought it handled fine. I could still throw it into corners without it feeling tippy. I very much liked it. YMMV.

 

I ran a setup like this for several years. It's not horrible, not the greatest though.

 

How does it handle? Granted the FJ is more top heavy. But I feel like the 5100s are lacking some damping with no front sway bar and I could certainly use more

 

I agree. If it's just cosmetic there's nothing wrong with the spacers. I put in spacers when I first got the truck because I had no intention on wheeling it. ( I'm saying "had" ). Now I'm trying to decide which way to go with a legit lift. The spacers worked fine. The truck lined up just fine. I only lost a little caster because I still have stock UCA's. Truck drives fine though. I actually fabricated my front spacers.

It's definitely the quickest and cheapest way.

 

Those could were way too stiff for our 4cyl though. I swapped ome 881s onto them and it was a night and day difference.

On the FJ paired with 650# springs they are a little under damped (soft) for my liking with no front sway bar. With one I'm sure it would be fine, but one of those stupid welded nut-certs in the frame for the sway bar bracket broke off so no go there.

 

Thanks for the input. How much lift were you running and did you notice any caster wobble due to stock UCA's? My last truck suffered from the death wobble (I.e caster wobble) and it would start to bounce all over the place.

 

Spacers were 1-1/4" tall, so about 2-1/2"~3" up front. Truck goes straight and true. I had it aligned right away. The tech got a little bit of caster back. It's was just on the "minimal" border of the spec. I get no wobble at all. I did notice though that if I'm a road with a high center crown, as I travel over the crown, say changing lanes, the truck does react a little more. You can feel it track to the side little more than it used to. But, def not bad at all. The new wheels with the greater offset don't help that either.

 

I wheeled with my spacer lift. Eventually broke both AALs and killed the rear shocks.

 

This is why I'm looking at lifts (now). The more I read on here though, the harder it's getting to decide

 

I definitely don't want to go all out. I do know I want to go Dakars in the rear. It's sounding like the 6112 billies are pretty sweet

 

Your house is fine if you'd like. I'll go anywhere the gps tells me to go lol. The earlier the better for me so 4AM, JK whatever time you feel isn't too early. I don't usually have coffee but I'll probably be sipping on a Dunkin

 

Chances are I'll be up early because of the kids anyway, so whatever time you want to meet up works for me. I'll shoot you a PM in a sec.

 

Morning New Englanders