Limited springs and OR shocks/struts to help the ride?

You tried to search the exact terms of my comment, and you think no results means you are right?

Wow

Yeah, not much point in continuing this discussion then

 

HotBag,

Pro "take-offs" are occasionally available used - this is usually just the front shocks, springs, and rear shocks (the $$$ upper control arms aren't a necessary component) - and there are people who claim they can't throw a rock and not hit a set for $1200 with less than 10 miles on them, but like a lot of what you read here, it's a hot bag of..well, you know. I've seen a deal close to that once, maybe twice in the past 6 months, and I wasn't fast enough on the draw. What I see more of is well used sets that are ready to be sent out for rebuilding, which all-in would total around $2000 +/-. At that point, my local dealer has new stuff priced at about $2600, and I'd be tempted to go that route (but now my big debate is if I want to just bail while this thing is still basically new, and see what they do with the '24 now that they officially confirmed manual transmissions won't be killed off..).

I've read a few people who have swapped to the Pro setups that actually give a little detail about their experience saying their truck now rides like they wished it had - handles the little stuff that would typically send the chassis in to a bit of a shake a lot smoother, less roll and brake dive, and soaks up bigger bumps with grace as well. This is, of course, between the indignant cries if it being inferior to both $5000 desert racing getups, and of course the 5100.

"Just go test drive a Pro!" Well, Pro's are rare around here, and I've not seen one on a dealer lot anytime in recent memory. While I generally consider dealers to be dirtbags, if they'd even let me, I'd kind of hate to put miles on a new one just to test out the suspension and see if I'd want to retrofit my OR (more because I, as a buyer, was pretty happy to snag mine with 3 miles on it; but I'm perhaps on the OCD scale of things). There is one private party for sale locally but I'm not sure if I want to waste their time or not to be honest; I may just lay out the situation and see if they'd let me take a spin for a case of beer or something.

 

Do you know what quotes mean?
Here's my point, just because people complain about the Hitachi shocks (or the engine, transmission, stock tires, entune, etc.) it doesn't mean they are crap.
The stock equipment works fine for the majority of people.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but your logic is flawed. If complaints on TW meant something was crap, end of story, then the Tacoma would be a complete piece of crap (head to tail). And we know that's not true.
I stand by my original comment that IMO, the Tacoma rides like a body on frame truck. It is what it is.

 

I did test drive a Limited before I bought one. The guy down the street from me has one and he and I took it for a 20 minute drive. I did notice the roughness going over bumps, but I definitely didn't realize the extent of the harshness until I owned one and drove it every day. It wasn't that I was so excited during the buying process that I over looked it.

The problem with your suggestion about getting plugged into my other people in my area with Tacomas is that no one seems to be interested in making the ride quality better, instead focusing on jacking them up, bigger tires, off-road capabilities, etc.

Watch the videos that Vlady posted about a few posts back and see how different each set of shocks and struts makes the same Tacoma feel, with EVERYTHING else the same.

Just to clarify a couple things I said yesterday. It seems that Toyota designed the Tacoma suspension for a specific use and have the feel it has as a result of that, and in turn aftermarket struts/shocks have similar design goals, but mostly increasing off-road capabilities. In my case, I don't care about off road use, so most if not all of the aftermarket parts aren't geared towards me.

About looking at Lexus vehicles. It seems clear that Toyota uses the same suspension designs across a variety of vehicles, and if I can find a Lexus that has the same strut length and spring height as the Tacoma, it might be worth trying one of them because the suspensions in those vehicles would be designed with comfort in mind. I say might because of the cost of Lexus parts.

Does anyone know if the front struts for the 4Runner are the same as the Tacomas? If so, I believe the Lexus GX460 is same vehicle as the 4Runner. That doesn't solve the problem with the rear, so I'm not sure what I would do about that yet.

Probably not worth all the effort and expense, ...it's just a thought.

 

Seat time in multiple vehicles is only my suggestion so you can avoid spending money on parts that potentially won't help. I'm not here to tell you that "your truck sucks because its a truck, so get used to it" like others may be insinuating. I just encourage you to actually plug into your regional Tacoma groups and drive as many as possible. One test drive in a truck on 5100's would've saved you $500, one test drive in a PRO may save you $2k, and one test drive in a truck on 6112's might be all you need to figure out that what you're searching for may be a different spring rate in combination with a slightly better shock. You can throw alot of money away experimenting until you find comfort. Don't count out all these jacked up off road trucks just yet; yes, many ride really stiff and are overbuilt in spring weight compared to weight of truck, but you may be surprised to learn that some people actually do things right, and some of these offroad jacked up trucks ride much better than stock.

 

What I didn’t like about those videos is they lacked scientific rigor and the chronology didn’t make any sense. Like how could they not know the last shock was a King based on deduction. I’m guessing the order events in the videos was not the same as in reality.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see any mention of what they were testing except for brand names. It would be nice to know specifics about the coil overs being tested, eg model number, body diameter, extended and collapsed length, part number, cost, spring rate, etc.

All of the results were complexly subjective. At the very least they could have gave point scores for each test.

It would been nice if they gave us some detail about each test. They could have showed us the terrain, the speeds, and bonus used an accelerometer to objectively compare the performance of each setup.

Another thought I had, is that they could have setup a race course and compared timings.

I’m an engineer. I like numerical objective comparisons.