Old man emu bp-51 with leaf springs

i figured i would ask here i couldn't find any reviews but i am thinking about buying the old man emu lift kit with the leaf springs, and i have no clue on how well they are or what the lift height is does anyone know or heard anything about the reviews of this lift kit?

 

I’ve read on here that the kit is very good, adjustable, and durable. I’ve also read that from other folks that for a little more money why not upgrade to a Fox, Icon, Kings kit. I’m an OME/ARB guy. I came really, really ridiculously close to getting the BP-51 with Dakar’s a few weeks ago, but actually settled on their lesser kit. Chose my own coils/shocks, went heavy duty Dakar’s in the rear, and all out the door for under $2K. I believe (though I don’t have my notes in front of me) that all of BP-51 kit came to around $3.8K.

I can’t be useful on ride height or ride quality of the BP-51’s, sorry. But if you’re interested, I’ll be doing a review of my new “lesser” OME suspension when I get it back from the shop this Friday or Saturday.

And hopefully someone with more direct experience will chime in to help you in the meantime.

 

Honestly I’m new to this and I didn’t think that the kings, icon and fox where gonna be better shocks thank you for that information and I’m interested in the review that your gonna do

 

I rank OME shocks (all of their components, really) right up there with the best. When doing my own research I looked closely at the durability aspect of all of these different kits, and, again, OME was up there at/near the top. Other brands/kits are probably more “task oriented”, but OME blends a lot of performance and costs together very nicely.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/ome-bp-51-review-on-3rd-gen.485741/

That’s the post for an actual user of the BP-51’s that I referred to while I was trying to decide if I wanted to go that route.

 

Thanks Plucky, that review had a lot of good information

 

NO problemo! And heard from my friend’s shop, who is installing my OME coilovers, Dakar’s, and LCE Header, and my truck will be ready late this afternoon or tomorrow. Very excited to see the improvement in overall function and if I made the right call kit wise, or if I should have gone with the BP-51’s, after all, haha.

 

Any closer to making the call on your BP-51’s?

 

I have BP-51s. Lift height will depend on how much preload you set in the front and how you have your leaf springs configured.

At stock preload (20mm) on my 2013, I got 4" in front with no weight. And with Heavy Dakars I initially got 5" in the back with a shell and it eventually settled some.

I've added a arb bumper+winch; adjusted for taco lean by setting front driver side to 25mm and I got exactly 3" on both sides.
In the rear, I removed the top overload leaf and I'm at 3 1/2"~

I'm adding sliders, roof racks and rear bumper eventually... so will probably have to reainstall the overload.

 

You’ve got a good looking truck. I am, however, surprised by how much initial lift you had from your BP-51’s at stock preload. I don’t recall ever reading from anyone who had that much. That must have been a surprise, haha. Like, “Whoa, is that me??” Haha. Dang.

How do you like the ride?

 

And now I’m worried my heavy duty Dakar’s are going to do the same to the back of my regular cab. In the front I’ve got the OME 887 coils and soft ride shocks. I figured that was the way to go having an ARB on the front. Guess I could always have cut 1/2” plate steel and lay it in the bed, haha. That’d be one heck of a bed mat.

 

It's rides incredible. I love the rebound and compression adjustments, but I always gotta take a shower after adjusting them. I've had no leaks and no problems with them other than height adjustment collar being incredibly difficult to turn even with the springs compressed.

The high lift numbers are because ARB sets them for trucks with bumpers by default. You have to have adjust them before installing if you have no weight. I didn't since I knew I was adding armor soon after.

Here's the 4/5+ lift in the front & back right after install


Here's how it is now:


I've only got 265s and they sometimes look small with 3" of lift. Instead of bigger tires, I'm thinking about making adjustments to lower it to around 2~ all around.

 

Easy to just pull leafs to adjust as needed. You're gonna have some crazy rake with Heavys

 

I don’t have the 51s but have rode in the a few with them an it was amazing. Your gonna spend a lot of time adjusting the compression/rebound to your liking from what I’ve seen. I have Kings with adjusters an couldn’t really tell the difference in quality of ride.

 

I’ll confess to running a Pro Comp 3”/1” spacer lift before, and it provided about 3.5” of front lift. My leaf springs were already pretty flat from hauling heavy things for 200K miles so I used my rear air bags to level the ride to my liking. Pretty much the single worst combination of lift/leveling ever put onto a Tacoma, haha. But it was all okay — almost no off-roading at the time. And running the 265’s never looked odd in my opinion. It’s a good size tire to run if one isn’t heavy rock crawling or going through super mud bogs.

I’m glad to know that the ride is that good. If my soon-to-be setup gets the job done for its full service life I’ll upgrade to the BP-51’s next time around. The adjustments are a nice feature to have. And your truck does look stellar.

I’m thinking about adding a rear plate bumper with a tire swing-out carrier to help add some weight. Side effect will be making my truck appear longer than it actually is. Haha.

 

With as highly recommended as Kings are that’s a serious statement. OP can’t go wrong however he ultimately proceeds.

 

Only speaking from my experience, love mine for sure.

 

I'm happy with my OME setup but after a year and a half of driving with it recently added weight with bumper and winch and currently working on retweaking the preload. Couple weeks ago went to a different higher setting and it's too stiff for me so hopefully this weekend will remove the front coilovers again to reduce the preload closer to my previous setting. Since I got the suspension though it was definitely was an improvement over stock.

 

Good looking truck, right there.

 

Got my truck back day before yesterday, and I’m well pleased with the overall improvement. 2 of the 4 old shocks were blown, the old leafs were saggy and flat, and that spacer in the front had to go. Been driving around for two days and it’s so much better than before, even before a proper alignment, that I could never go back.

I can only imagine how much better the BP-51’s would have to be. If you’ve got the green I’d go for it, OP.