Intro to fitting 35s (< 3" Lifts for those that wheel and love alignments)

I never understood why people loved getting those adjustable ball joint uppers. I think 99% of TW thinks adjusting caster at the uca increased tire clearance.

For heimed upper wouldn’t you want to equally thread out both heims to increase camber?

I’m looking into heimed uppers to correct my negative camber

 

Wow!! Wish i had this when i went to get an alignment!! Very well written!!

 

Adjustables allow camber compensation and also allow you to move the spindle forward giving you a smidge more clearance.. if anything it’s a negligible difference..

 

More caster from the uca won’t give my anymore clearance. I already fit 35s no problem, just trying to correct my -1.7 camber

 

Had my 35x12.5’s mounted yesterday. A little taller than my old 315s, but a little narrower. Only about 60lbs per tire.

 

That is all the extra info I didn’t want to really go into with my earlier post. I was trying to keep it kinda absolute bare bones and still get the message across that it involves a lot to clear 35s. Kudos for putting the alignment info together so that others can see the how and why the alignment needs to be changed to fit 35s.

Although the other part of my brain tells me that if I had a straight axle up front I could move the whole assembly forward and have way more room up front...

 

Can we make a thread for 37s and 3in now....
My 315s look tiny next to these.

 

I say at that point to keep the lift minimal...cutting the cbi front bumper you got there to clear the tire, possibly tub the fender well since I don’t know if smashing is gonna do enough. Also cut the fender another 2-3inches. Should look great though

 

It's an April fools joke. No way I'm going 37s. Just got them for my SAS 4runner build.

 

Dang it. I got my hopes up. I let you be the ginea pig so I can follow!

 

Lol it's too much work to tub the fenders and firewall. Would be pretty sweet though. I would need to get 5.29s or trade someone who wants 488s

 

I don’t play April fools...you got my hopes up. I was hoping for guys to go bigger than 35s besides big mike. I had pipe dreams of some 36” iroks or something similar on 3” lift ifs. I doubt I will have the patience to sas this tacoma.

 

They help with the caster loss after lifting just like the other UCA. What's nice about the move-able ball joint UCA's is you can take your truck to an alignment shop have them set your caster, camber, and toe. If your truck feels squirrelly on the highway after the alignment or think that the steering is too hard, you can change the position of the ball joint to increase/reduce caster without affecting camber or toe much, if at all. They have other benefits too, they aren't my cup of tea, but I can see why others find them appealing.

Heimed uppers would definitely help if your frame/shock towers are tweaked. Before I bought my +2 kit I asked jberry which options were worth the money and time to deal with. He said heims are worth it and wished he had them on his 2nd gen. Shock towers have a tendency to start to tweak in board over time due to hard hits and all the cumulative small hits with the desert driving we do. When the shock towers get bent inboard they start to pull the entire UCA assembly inboard too and adds negative camber. Being able to adjust the upper ball joint outboard can negate those "bent shock tower" effects. Some downsides to heims is obviously the increased cost and they don't absorb vibrations like rubber or poly, its a metal-to-metal joint so you might feel more of the road through them.

If you decide to get heimed UCAs be sure to get a tubular design. I think there might be 1 or 2 other companies that make heimed tubular stock length uppers other than TC....I could have sworn Camburg made them too but I only see the billet/box style on their website. I wouldn't recommend the billet or box style for stock length. There's not a lot of room in our wheel wells/suspension systems especially with stock length components and "boxed" designs are usually larger and take up more room and can cause interference issues on the coilover reservoir hose, spring, and the actual framing/sides of the shock tower. I had issues myself and have seen others have issues too. Here is a photo of one of my old Icon billet set, after tinkering with the heim positions I was hitting the UCA on the side of the shock tower at droop. IIRC I was also able to hit the spring with the UCA as well. There are ways around some of these issues, like clocking the spring so it doesn't interfere, grinding out the shock tower interference, and adjusting the reservoir hose....but fuck that, why do that extra work when there's another design that doesn't have those problems.



Also be aware there are limitations to how far you can thread the heims out. They might have enough adjustment to take up your negative camber, if not, they could probably get you close to 0. Here's a photo of my UCA instructions with the limit. If I recall correctly, the Icons had a similar limit.



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You could thread out both heims if you needed to. Like the LCA, the heims on a UCA affect both caster and camber, but due to the shape of the UCA the effects are much more direct, so the front heim wouldn't be doing much for the camber. Here's a couple more diagrams that might help explain it better. I reworded some of my previous statements, it might make more sense this way.



The front heim affects caster significantly more than the rear, here's another diagram/example....

 

So I know that spacer lifts are a nono esp if offroading... how about wheel spacers which is what I assume you’re talking about?

 

My bad @mauidogg. The cutting isn't even the main reason for not wanting to go 37s. Main reason that most people seem to overthink is steering. I feel like 35s is the limit our trucks can handle without blowing up our steering. I dont want to replace steering all the time since it's a pain in the ass job. I know marlin kits came out with his HD steering rack but that's a lot of money that I dont have.

So I'm building my 1st gen 4runner that I bought back in the day in high school. It's been my dream to build it. Once I get wheels fit the 37s i'll throw them on the taco for you haha

 

I've ran spacers for years on my racecar and never had a single issue.

 

So the marlin rack is just a retro fitted Tundra steering rack. We discovered this after my buddy bought a tundra and it was identical to the Marlin photos.

 

@JoeCOVA

Funny I was thinking along the lines of a 100/200 series LC based on the Arctic Taco build. If they share the same US 5.7 would they likely share the same rack and pinion?

 

Hmm interesting. I hadn’t thought of the LC. I imagine it’s probably the same thing or similar. My buddy has a 100, I’ll check it out tomorrow at work.