Long Travel BS Thread

For us mere mortals who don't have a Shop/garage to work on our trucks, having a place that not only builds your truck but aligns it too is good, especially when your old. Plus sometimes I buy the entire Company pizzas and get to see smiles!

 

x2

 

I do the same for the guys at the engine machine shop

 

I try to do the same whenever I outsource locally. It's crazy how investing just $25 in donuts or pizza will increase quality and care instantly. Always worth it

 

If only it was 25 bucks....

I have done business with The Truck Shop( https://sdtruckshop.com/ ) here in San Diego since 2012, and cant imagine going anywhere else for my Tacoma needs, as well as my Wifes Rav 4, from Maintenance and warranty work, to offroad bolt on upgrades, wheels, tires to full fab work and pre-runner builds. They do very nice overland builds too.
Only time I went outside them was for my JD fab sua kit.

Ok I did my truck shop plug for the day....

 

I've never taken my whole vehicle (any of them) to a shop for repair or heaven forbid mods haha. But if I ever do I'd still bring em food like I do with the machine shop specialists. Everyone works better on a full stomach.

 

Gesture appreciation FTW!

 

Kinda curious how to measure caster with IFS and also a good way to account for the tires’ friction on the garage floor after you make a change. I’d like to do my own alignment on the LT 4Runner or at least good enough to clearance tires and cruise a bit for things to settle/make changes to ride height. Only adjusted toe on the SASd taco and bouncer.

 

You put your tires on a low friction surface (even stolen McDonalds tray work) so you can do toe and a caster sweep without binding suspension/tires.

 

That’s a good idea. I’m going to have to learn more about castor. I can wrap my head around toe and camber, but I don’t know the reference measurement for castor if that makes any sense. Guessing upper ballpoint through center of the hub?

 

It’s pretty common on Chevy too
My lowers are locked
And tops have cam tabs

 

Basically the same as a solid axle, think of your upper and lower balljoints as the top and bottom of the kingpin. The only difference being you can dial some steering behavior in more with IFS because you can have different caster numbers from driver to pass side which is called cross-caster and can help deal with road crown and tramlining.

 

The look on Ian's face when we cycled the kit for the first time and calculating the numbers was priceless. I think we both said WTF at the same time

 

From ubj to LBJ is the angle for castor. On these trucks if you're aligning in your driveway, just slam the lower all the way forward and then dial it back until camber is good, and you'll be pretty close, then adjust toe from there.

We got our own alignment rack in our shop this year, and it's been such a gamechanger as a business to be able to bang out perfect alignments easily and quickly.

 

Yeah he called me haha I was pretty surprised too, since i've only done the +2.25

 

Yeah I watched your YouTube video the other day and that got me curious lol I don’t have access to anyone who cares enough to do a custom/out of the ordinary alignment around here unfortunately.

 

I still need to fiddle more on mine but I'm already at positive camber (1/4 degree) and still only at 2.25 degrees of caster. Worst case I'll machine new spacers to move the LCA forwards more and probably the uppers rearwards but seems like a weird issue to have. Left and right numbers are perfectly symmetric so i don't think i have anything bent.

this is all i use for camber/caster. cheap enough and easy to use. no brain power needed. although mine is red anodized. not sure if they just changed colors or if they improved something
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/...fP-Trc4CWL94lJTjv-sqlpzhPf3wVE95-iW2HhaXtbwms

 

have you reached out to JD to see what they say?

 

He’s obviously doing something wrong! That was always my issue too! Never did find what I did wrong up front though.

 

Im stopping by in person at the end of the week to get their opinions. Can't really make too much fuss over the numbers since the Kit is used