Icon lift install

I got a bunch of Icon stuff and took a bunch of pictures while installing it. This write up is a little how-to and a little of "Icon's instructions are vague as hell, this is what you should look out for"

I thought it was a good idea to start with the rear and move forward because why not.

Rear bump stop strike plate removal
I got Icon hydraulic bump stops so I needed to remove the factory bump stops.
The instructions said to cut slits in the rivets holding the factory bump stop plate on and then showed a picture of an air chisel... I have no idea what the instructions were supposed to show here, these are a bitch to get off.

Cutting slits in them didn't do crap, cutting the head off wasn't enough.
Cutting slits


Cutting off the heads



What ended up the only way that I got these things out reliably was to cut off the head and drill out the center to weaken the rivet then keep hitting it with a bunch that would fit in the hole in the rivet (to keep it there).
Drilling out the center


I went through quite a few drill bits, this is not crappy steel and you're drilling out a lot of it.
Whatever you do, do not break off a carbide drill bit inside the rivet, this will ruin your day. So just don't do it.

They do come off!


Eventually when enough metal chips are on the floor you're sitting on to make it dangerous to slide your butt around they come off!
Note, my truck is 4500 miles old and already there's rust behind the factory bump stops

Rear shock removal
Now onto the rear shocks. These are pretty darn easy.
Take off the bottom bolt

Take off the top nut

Marvel at your success \o/


Mock up new shocks and bump stop mount
This is where I put in the rear shock and bump stop mount to mock up where the remote reservoir mount should go. The instructions for this are pretty crappy, but really this hole can go anywhere in the general area and still work fine.

Put the shock in with the bump stop mount to get an idea where the remote reservoir mount needs to go, there's a silver mark above the gas tank mount.

One problem I have with the kit is that Icon provides self tapping bolts for mounting the remote res., I think this is stupid, especially since this part of the frame has complete access to the inside to put a nut and a wrench. So I went to the store and got some nuts and bolts.


Remove rear spring
Rear spring... also pretty easy

Take off nuts holding on U bolts


Take off rear shackle


Take off front mount


Painting
Before removing the rear springs I drilled the hole for the rear shock remote reservoirs, and while we were taking off the springs I sanded off the rust and area then put on some primer, then painted it.
Primer and no spring!


New springs
In addition to the lift I got some shims to correct the drive line angle, and I put them in backwards! (don't do that). The thicker part of the shim goes towards the back of the vehicle to rotate the diff housing to straighten out the U joint.

New spring and backwards shim


Added bump stop strike plate to top of spring


New shocks and bump stop
Install the shock and bump stop mount, it's pretty easy, just make sure the rubber sandwich of stuff at the top of the shock is installed correctly.

New shock and bump mount installed


Remote reservoir mounted


Bump stop installed


After we finished up with everything and lowered the truck back down is when I noticed the diff angle was WAY wrong and we were able to take out the U bolts and rotate the shim in place.

Grab a beer, the easy stuff is over

Front end
This is where a lot of stuff happens simultaneously, and this is where I had the most problems with the Icon instructions. The front coilovers, UCA's, LCA skid plates, secondary shock hoops, and secondary shocks themselves all have independent instructions. Some of the instructions overlap, and a lot of the pictures are not a good angle to make it clear what needs to happen. I did call them up and while they were great to talk to, they didn't really help with "if i have all these kits what exactly should i omit from one kit and replace it with parts from another". Sometimes the overriding or overlapping parts were obvious, sometimes they were not.

Remove everything from the steering knuckle except the LCA.


Remove the caliper, disc, and old coilover. One bolt on bottom, 3 bolts on top.



This is the first annoying thing. To find out where you need to drill a hole for the secondary shock hoop, you need to totally install the coilover. The bottom bolt is loose, but the top 3 bolts and the spacer and the secondary shock hoop is tight, all to align the hole to drill.
We had a few problems with these secondary hoops. First, one of the hoops required us to drill a hole very close to the top box of the frame, this required a lot of work to get the nut to thread on inside the frame. If the hoop was 1/2 inch longer there would be no question about how close to the top of the box frame the hole would have to be. Second, the bracket at the lower end of the hoop is less than 90 degrees from the hoop side to the frame side. This makes getting a socket on the bolt a pain in the ass, and they want you to torque this to 120 ft lbs.
Mock up the coilover and secondary hoop


This is the side that was too close to the top of the frame. You can see in the picture we're drilling right at the radius of the bend.
Drill a big hole in your frame


This is part of the second annoying thing. The lower control arm skid plates are half of the lower mount for the secondary shocks, then you weld a tab onto the LCA itself for the other half. This was actually fine except that the LCA skid plate uses existing holes and the instructions say drill out a hole to 1/2 inch hole for a 3/8 bolt, I thought that was really big of a hole, but they use the over sized hole to allow for the LCA skid plate to move around. All we did was elongate the existing hole with a file to allow for the LCA skid plate to get the correct alignment.

Once the LCA skid plate is attached you can mock up the lower shock mounting tabs and weld it in place on the LCA. We did a fair bit of filing to the bottom of the shock tab to have it mate better with the factory LCA.
Finished secondary shock lower mounting tab welded to LCA


Install the coilover and mount the secondary shock hoop. While you're at this step make sure to get a piece of thick paper or anything to clearance the shock hoop with the body, on the drivers side we had to remove one of the fuel line mounting brackets and on the passenger side some minor bending needed to happen to make sure nothing was touching the secondary hoop.
Coilover and secondary shock hoop installed



The UCAs are super annoying. How Toyota ever replaces a UCA or does anything with this is beyond me. The thing is, you need to pull out a 14 inch long bolt through the entire assembly and the body is 100% in the way. What I did was watch a ton of youtube videos and tried to think of a better way, but there isn't any. Grab a pair of channel locks (I wrapped the jaws in electrical tape to minimize scratching) and just start bending the body seam away from the engine bay until you have enough clearance to get the bolt out.
One thing I did before putting the bolt back in was to grind a flat into the head of the bolt so it would go in much easier.

Third annoying thing, in the picture below of the UCA installed, you can see the remote reservoir line. That line is routed funny, there is plenty of room to move that line 3/4 inch back towards the engine and it would clear the UCA completely. The way it is installed now, it is *possible* for the UCA to bind on the hose. I don't think it is critical, or even that much of a problem, but the UCA does touch the line when the suspension is full droop.
New UCA installed, everything tight


The secondary shocks require a new steering stop to be welded on to the LCA. I'm not 100% sure this was required but the instructions *really* wanted you to put it on. It's really hard to hold a half moon chunk of steel on another half moon chunk of steel and weld it. But the clever use of hammers let us get it in position long enough to tack it down.
New steering stop



Fourth annoying thing. The secondary shocks are too long to fit between the mount points by over 2 inches. We had to get really creative with how to compress the shock to mount it. In all it took about 2.5 hours to install one side, and 15 minutes to install the other side. The trick is, there is plenty of room above the top mount and below the bottom mount for some nylon webbing. Ratchet strap to the rescue!

Wrap the strap around the shock as shown below and compress the shock to the correct length. Take your time tightening the strap, there's nothing holding it on besides the radius of the mounts. After that, grab a beer and celebrate.
Compress the shock


Install the shock


Admire the shock!


Fifth annoying thing. The instructions for the secondary shocks say to mount the remote reservoir to the body and then to be careful that the two reservoirs don't touch each other.
OR you could just mount them both to the same mounting bracket for the coilover reservoir.

Sixth annoying thing. There is a brake line mount where the secondary shock body lives. The instructions say to drill a hole between the factory shock tower and the bump stop brace into the frame and use a self tapping bolt to secure the brake line mount. This is silly the location sucks, you need to drill through two layers of steel right at a weld, no thanks.
I haven't done it yet, but there is plenty of room to just run a new break line. For now the bracket is zip-tied out of the way.

Cab Mount Chop
Well, while we're here and everything is taken out. Why not do more cutting and welding!
Pictures on the internet kinda suck, but they got me through it with lots of guessing and zooming in on blurry pictures. I tried to take some half way decent pictures of my cuts.

Basic outline of the cut


Be sure to leave extra and remove later. This is one of those, measure 20 times, cut 5 times, spend 20 minutes filing kinds of jobs.

Bottom up view of the cut


You can see below that I saved A LOT of the line, this was because I wanted to make sure of where I was cutting and because the angle grinder wouldn't easily fit much further in. Also, not a SINGLE picture online showed a 3rd gen taco as having this extra boxing in the cab mount.
First cut and apparently the 3rd gen's are different!


Cut the top part of the mount up to the line with a dremel cutoff wheel so it would fit. That boxing is still in the way.
Cut up to line on top of mount


The boxing was kind of a pain in the butt to remove, my 4.5 inch cut off wheel wasn't deep enough to go straight up. So we put a grinding wheel on and just removed the steel by turning it into sparks.
Rough cut, final outline


We spent a lot of time with a file getting the fitment spot on. Just keep going putting the plate on and seeing where the high spots are and filing it down until it fits nicely.
Final, done cutting, done filing


Last fit check, and it's good!


Last thing to do is weld it on! ... well, then primer and paint it. One point of note, be careful around the rubber body mount. A metal framing square fit real nice in the gap between the body and the mount to keep my TIG torch away from the rubber.
Welded on!


Go get some wheels and some new tires. Throw everything in the back and have your favorite shop mount/balance/align everything.

 

Wow thanks for the great post ! Truck looks awesome BTW!

 

Awesome write-up, but inline the pics rather than the thumbnails!

 

What is this? A thread for ants?

 

Plasma cutter makes quick work of those factory rivets

 

Awesome write up! They suggest a pneumatic chisel for the rivets on the bump stops dont they?

 

I actually laughed out loud at this.

 

Damn, OP fixed the photos so now new people to the thread won't get it. Oh well, at least a few of you laughed.

 

I still laughed. Kind of figured it had something to do with the photos.

 

Great write up !!

 

Yeah, they do, but honestly I can't see what that would do. Shearing off the rivet head and grinding it off is the same thing, and I can tell you those rivets DO NOT move even when you cut off the head. They don't even start to weaken until you put a 3/8inch hole in the 1/2inch rivet.

Haha, I'm just glad I got the images fixed. But this is funny now

 

How the cv angles up front

 

I haven't noticed any problems, though, I'm not 100% sure what a "bad cv angle" looks like.
I did get a front diff drop kit, but haven't put it on yet.

I can post a picture of the CV's tomorrow.

 

Great post and tacoma .

 

Great write up an badass setup/truck.
How’s the ride quality though?

 

Here is the pic of the driver's side CV
Like I said. I think it looks ok.

I honestly don't think it's much worse than stock.
I drive over some bumps on my way to work in the truck and a 05 Honda Accord and bumps in the road feel like bumps in the road.. *shrug*