Let the weekend o' wrenching commence! Bumper and Kings install.

Taking off tomorrow to hit storage to pick up tools, and heading out to my house to wrench.

C4 Lo Pro, reinforcement brackets, and king remote reservoir brackets powder coated, picked up today, and ready to go.

The old reliable M8000 rebuilt, new synthetic line spooled up, and installed in bumper. BD S8-20 installed on bumper. Will get to wiring harness this weekend if there's time, but the Packers are playing Sunday night, the W coming back in from Detroit on Sunday, so there has to be limits!

ECGS bushing and Energy Suspension radiator mounts going in as well while I'm there.

Gonna be a long weekend, but truck will be ready for wheeling, hunting, and pulling myself out of stucks come Monday.








If my recently bulged disc, supply of motrin and vicodin hold out, should be a good weekend of wrenching! Anxious to see how the compression adjusters work out. Familiar with Kings as I also have them on the gen1, but the adjusters will be new.

Alignment scheduled for Monday.

Should be pretty nice to wrench on a clean truck with 2800 miles for a change!

 

Awesome. Take lots of pics of the install!!

 

Nice. Good call on coating the resi brackets, never was a fan of the shiny mount... the kings are enough bling.
The C4 frame brackets are beefy!

 

I never thought of powdering the brackets. Has me thinking now.

 

Purposely waited on having bumper done until I had the kings in because of this. Had them do it while they had the bumper. Not a fan of a lot o' shiny stuff and bling under there. And those brackets are just funky looking. Wanted to have them "disappear" as much as possible. I was tempted to have the kings themselves custom anodized black as well, but that wasn't worth the added expense to me. Blacked out kings would have been nice though!

 

That would actually be pretty sick. Resi's, fittings and brackets all blacked out. Only think blue would be the stickers/coils/upper mount. Now you got me thinking damn you...

 

What amount of preload are you going to use. I think out of the box they are 3-4 threads?

 

Not sure yet. I'm running 700lb coils, and just could not find anything definitive on how much lift I'll get with the present factory settings. I believe (from what I've gathered by searching) at current settings I could potentially be looking at close to 2" with the 700's at minimum settings. But not sure since I'm adding 145lbs of bumper, brackets, light, and winch.

I'd like to keep lift minimal. The Kings are all about handling the weight of the bumper and winch, and performing awesomely off road (not lift). Only reason I want any lift at all is to get the front skid / diff up higher. I know the 700's are the minimum I'd want to run with the way I drive and the added weight up front, and with those, I may need to anticipate close to 2" lift in front at near minimum pre-load. Ideally I want 1" to 1.5" or so in front, and 1/2" to 1" in rear. Want to maintain a near factory rake on the truck since I don't like the "bro lean" anytime I put a few pounds in the bed. I have a set of machined billet 1" blocks for the rear (the horror!) until I get everything on and figured out. Want to see just what the compression adjusters bring to the table before I decide on rear AAL (tend to stiffen ride) or leaf pack (best solution but manufacturers making new leafs with minimal lift don't seem to be a thing). A 1" tapered block should create near zero problems in the short term, and is a temporary solution until I wring this thing out and decide on the set up for the rear. So many options there. AAL, new leaf packs, stock leafs with firestone bags and Daystar cradles? Need to research more on that once I see how everything else comes together first.

I'm okay with keeping stock UCA's, but that will depend on amount of minimum lift I get up front, and alignment numbers come Monday. Taking things one step at a time, and will ultimately want to wind up with a truck that I can run 33's on (once I burn through the 32's), minimal lift, great alignment numbers, and a suspension that can handle my driving style (point a to point b hauling ass on bad roads) and weight up front. If final heights and alignment number don't come out right, I'll start researching which UCA I want to get caster back where it needs to be.

 

Can you take a few pics of the lo pro bumper install especially the light. I just bought the exact one. Waiting til oct to get it. Looking forward to seeing your install for tips and tricks!

 

I think Deaver J66 is a full leaf replacement and only does about 1.5" of lift.

I got my Kings for the exact same reason, handling all the weight offroad. My problem is that I have an excessive amount of weight so I had to do a full leaf replacement with the Deaver U402 which adds 3" of lift in the rear so I need at least 2" of lift in the front, otherwise I will have some crazy rake

I almost got the compression adjusters but after getting more info it seemed that most people just used the middle setting and never really make that many adjustments. The saved money I put into SPC UCA, they seem ok are are made more for Endurance than race applications, I also have a hard time spending close to $1k on UCA so I avoided the uniballs.

 

Lots of goodies. I'm super jealous. Good luck with install and post pics when you're done

 

Officially jealous! Pics please so I can drool

 

I've been eyeballing this bumper. picts and tips for the install.

It's going to be a killer rig.

 

Nice!! Can't wait to see it when it's done..

 

Do yourself a favor and use penetrating fluid in all bolts ...

Tried to change my oil last week and stripped one or the skid plate bolts. :|

 

Same here. Hate the bling on brackets on King lol.

 

Man, that was a lot of wrenching. I'm too old for this shit! But it's done. For now. Need to make some changes I think. The 1" block raised me up 1 3/4 to 2" in the rear. Not sure what accomplished that, but before and after measurements don't lie. I was expecting up to 1 1/4 as it's a tapered block (1" front to 1 1/4" rear). Installed correctly. Guess is the added compression of the King's over the Bilsteins helped the springs not sag quite so much! Don't know, but definitely up 2" measured at each wheel and the hitch.

I will likely take it out and put a 1/2" shim in, back the fronts off a couple turns, and that may get the truck just where I want it. The rear shocks are about an inch too short with the rear at full droop, and I don't like the shock being the limiting factor in axle droop.

Front came up 1 3/4 to 2" as well. 2" increase in height at the skid plate is very welcome, but would still like to back it off a half inch or so.

So, as I suspected, the Kings at factory settings w/ 700 lb coils brought the truck up 1 3/4". I added a couple turns on the drivers side to bring that up a bit to compensate for the lean.

With the standard tool, and King's T handle tool, I had no real issues making adjustments on the truck. Hit the spring contact points with PB blaster the evening before. Really did not have any difficulty adjusting.

Started friday night cutting up the bumper. Saturday morning got the bumper installed. Moved on to the rear, then went for the front body mounts replacement, followed by the ECGS bushing install.

I've replaced a few toyota CV axles in my time, so nothing new there. But pulling the needle bearing out was giving me a hassle for about 10 minutes. The ECGS tool just would not fit in between the bearing and carrier. Double checked video from their website. I was doing it correctly, but it just would not go in without forcing it, which I was not willing to do for fear of breaking off a piece of bearing race and losing it in the diff. Finally put the pulling end of the tool on the grinder.....




....and it snicked right into place with no hassle, and had the needle bearing out and new bushing installed rather quickly after that. A pain in the ass side job, but one I know I was better off doing while I was already there, and better in the long run.

Front Kings went in without too much difficulty, but did have to separate the tie rod end from the steering rack, unbolt the sway bar links, and drop the front of the sway bar to make it work.

Were I to ditch the sway bar, this install (and future installs) would likely be a bit easier. I'm not ditching the sway bar. I can handle the truck without it, panic maneuvers and all, but the W drives it far too much for me to risk it with someone like her who is unfamiliar with an off road, near "trail ready" truck. Screw the improved off road articulation and ride...I kinda like her and would like to keep her around a while.



Glad I had the remote reservoir brackets powder coated black. I like the look much better than the silver bracket.





Unfortunately, as I thought when I was running over the job in my head late Friday night, the C4 Lo Pro reinforcement brackets and King remote reservoir brackets are not compatible. If I had a shop with some tools for modifying the brackets and some time, maybe I could have got them to work. I just didn't have the tools and time to do so, so for now the reinforcement brackets sit in the box.




Was extra cautious to not scratch the Kings during install or bugger up adjustment holes or the like because I wanted a nice, clean job. The kind of job where it looked like I'd been through this a time or three. Because I have.

And then while installing passenger side front King, I was manipulating the sway bar, and it wasn't moving where I wanted it to. Went over to driver side, and "ahhhh, that's what it's hanging up on. God Damnit!!!!"



Oh well. A few minor scratches and a very tiny ding. Other than that it was a clean install, lol! Still, the hit to my "wrenching ego" pisses me off.

Once everything on and all bolts checked and re-checked, hit everything with a good coat of Mavcoat. Will hit them every 6 months or so with this to keep them looking like they weren't drug out of a trash pile behind King's shop.



Now, on to the finished product!

 

As it sits now. Right about 1 3/4 to 2" all around.












Pretty happy with my "quick on / quick off" front plate option I came up with after failing to find a single front plate option I liked. A couple 1/4-20 stainless steel nutserts, and a couple Harley Davidson black anodized seat bolts.

I don't run a front plate often (never been stopped) but like the option to put it on if I'd rather not deal with getting stopped, or if I park on the street or at the airport. Meter maids at both those locations have nailed me a few times for no front plate. Best to have it on for the most part, but have it easily taken off for hitting the dirt.

 

Nice work!! Heck of a job. Truck looks awesome.

 

Baja Designs S8-20 light bar and winch wired up Saturday. Ready to rumble!




That shit is BRIGHT! Really loved the PIAA 80 Pro XT's on the Gen1 and was hesitant to go from incandescent to led, but this may just work. May likely end up yanking out the factory fogs and throwing a set of BD XL-R cornering lights in the future, but for now, I think this is quite workable.