Significantly More Travel with 6” Lift?

I’m finishing up the restoration on a repo’d 2008 that came with a 6” Fabtech drop bracket lift. It’s my first drop bracket lift. I replaced the coilovers with Fox 2.5’s, which have more travel than the Fabtech’s. I'm running poly bushings on both upper and lower control arms and I extended the front bump stops to make contact early enough to prevent the coilovers from bottoming out. It has extended SS brake lines.

The truck easily has 2x more travel up front than a stock Tacoma. It’s ridiculous how much travel it has, especially up travel. I took it through a frame twister to test it and didn’t see any signs of anything critical hitting, just the tires rubbing the fenders at max compression when turned. Body mounts are chopped and clear fine.

Am I missing something? I feel like more people would talk about drop bracket lifts if they gave this much travel. I looked up the BDS 6” lift that comes with the Fox coilovers and the bump stops look smaller than the ones I fabbed up. Am I going to wreck a CV or tie rod end or something? Or is this just an unspoken advantage of a drop bracket lift?

 

You don't get any more travel with any type of suspension lift unless it's long travel. Drop brackets just start higher lift wise because you are literally dropping the suspension lower compared to the frame. The amount of overall wheel travel stays the same though.

 

As @Saskabush said, a drop bracket just moves everything lower. Unless you upgrade to longer travel suspension, a drop bracket maintains the exact same travel as stock. Your truck is just higher.

 

A drop bracket lowers the lower control arm mounts and leaves the uppers in the stock location. It manages this by using longer spindles (ie steering knuckles), thereby increasing the distance between upper and lower control arms. This adds 6” to the gap between lower control arm and bump stop.

Without any further modification, this would allow an additional 6” of up travel at the bump stop, and even more at the wheel, barring some sort of mechanical interference like control arms hitting something else.

Fabtech has bump stops built into their coilovers, eliminating the need for traditional bump stops. Fox does not, and has noticeably more travel. The BDS kit comes with extended bump stops, and now that I look closer, brackets to relocate the bump stops further down. I’m not sure if the bump stop length is set to prevent the coilovers from bottoming out, or if something else maxes out first (like CV’s or TRE’s binding).

 

See my other reply above. This is more of a “fabrication and/or engineering knowledge required” type question.

 

From looking at my own pictures, it really looks like the CV and/or TRE will bind before the bump stop hits. I really don't want to remove the coilovers again just to cycle the suspension with a jack to check for clearance issues, but it looks like I'll have to. I'll probably be shimming the bump stops I put in unless the CV joints decide to surprise me.

 

So you think a drop bracket gave you 6" more travel?

The maximum angles of your control arms can only be increased slightly with extended travel shocks and upper control arms. Without going to physically longer control arms (long travel) that increase the travel at the wheel you aren't getting getting more than an inch or so of increased travel.

 

You misread what I wrote if you think I think a 6" lift gave me 6" more up-travel. I've been checking the control arms for signs of them hitting something, but I don't see any. I'm guessing that either the coils just aren't compressing enough for there to be a problem, or the CV's and/or TRE's are maxing out and I'm on borrowed time until I extend the bump stops more.

I'm absolutely getting more than an extra inch of travel at the moment though.

 

One more thing to consider is that if you have that much up travel, you're likely sitting at the bottom end of the range when static. I'd be curious what down travel (droop) you actually see when you jack up the truck from the frame.

 

I haven't measured, but it's not bad. Not a ton more than stock, but it's more than stock. I do need to lower the front about 1" to give me back some rake for when the truck is loaded, though. It has a bit of Carolina squat going on when I load up the bed now lol

 

I am quite familiar with how they work. You are still constrained by the geometry of the control arms though. They can only move up and down so far, it really has nothing to do with the bumpstop location/height or the height of the spindle.

Control arms are effectually a lever, they pivot at one point with the shock in the middle. The only way to get any additional travel, let alone 6", is for the control arms to pivot at much higher angles, which they can't do for a number of reasons. Therefor the only way to increase the travel is to increase the lever length (long travel control arms).

Basically think of drop bracket lifts like stilts. You still have the same range of motion in the suspension, you are just starting higher up. The main benefit is you retain most of your downtravel while still getting a lift. Usually lift comes at the cost of downtravel.

 

2x the travel would mean you went from approximately 8 inches of travel on OEM stock suspension to 16 inches of travel. 9, maybe even 10 inches of travel are possible with longer travel shock and upper control arm allowing slightly more max angle. But you literally said 2x the travel.

 

Can you explain what limits the control arms then? The more vertical the control arms are, the more lateral force they see and the less effective the coilovers become, but that won't physically limit travel. What I can think of are:

1) Mechanical interference, ie the control arm hitting the frame by the cam bolts, and
2) The bushings not having more give. Rubber bushings can only twist so much.

I have poly bushings (Whiteline), so #2 doesn't apply. #1 is contingent on the geometry of the drop bracket, and it's entirely possible for it to allow more clearance/travel. It definitely seems to. If the control arms were hitting something, there would be some sort of indication like a scratch/dent/bend. I honestly think the limiting factor right now is the max angle allowed by either the CV or TRE. I'm going to have to assemble the front without coilovers and cycle it with a jack to find out...or just add a ~2" shim to the bumps and call it good. That would be easy and still give me more up travel than stock. Right now my bumps are 5", stock is 1.75", so I would need 7.75" to get back to stock, not counting for the extra compression of the soft GM bump stops...so more like 8-8.25". Decisions decisions...

 

I never bothered to look up the stock travel of a Taco. The current bumps would give me close to 8" up a the wheel, assuming the control arm actually can travel far enough to hit it. I'm not convinced it can, and I'm not trying to be contentious, just looking for input. If I wanted an argument, I would post on Reddit.

 

It's usually the CV joints that max out first. The ball joints on the OEM control arms don't allow for much more than that either.

On down travel the UCA's will hit the coils on larger 2.5 coilovers. The ball joints tend to be close to max at that point as well. New UCA's can help there but then the CV joint becomes the limit.

On up travel it's usually the compressed length of the shock that is the first limit. After that the inner CV joint starts to pop out of the socket.

Here's a great video on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_68Hc8GtLko

 

Does the kit installed on your truck have these?

 

It does not. It had worn out Dirt Logic coilovers with primary bump stops built in. I'm guessing the kit on mine never came with extensions, or someone figured they weren't necessary. I'm not sure of the age, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's as old as the truck. Those coilovers were done...like, not even rebuildable anymore.

 

2x factory travel, I'll stick around

 

So far just about everyone is missing the point. When I'm done swapping engines in my XJ next weekend I'll check for clearance with the coilovers removed and adjust the bump stops accordingly. That's generally how people set up suspension when the shocks aren't the limiting factor. I don't think many people on here are in the fabrication crowd.

 

OP is correct, more total travel (not 2× though) is possible with a drop bracket lift, the increase appearing entirely on the uptravel side relative to ride height. However I would not recommend running it that way only because it increases the strain on the CV joints (by a lot).
Reason being CV joints are strongest by far when they are close to straight, which is how you want things to be when the suspension reaches the bump stop (the tire having a lot of weight on it, such as what happens when the suspension is all crossed-up/articulated while offroad). A little bit of upward angle on the CV shaft is tolerable (and is how Toyota engineered the suspension to be), but you definitely do not want it looking similar to the angle that typically occurs on the downtravel side (the downtravel side has less concern because there will be much less weight on the tire and it can slip more easily, which prevents torque from building up to high levels on the CV).

If you have access to another 2nd or 3rd-gen Taco you can measure, I'd suggest try to replicate the CV shaft angle of a stock truck right at the point where the bumpstop touches the control arm (more than likely it'll be similar to the amount your drop brackets drop down, added to the stock bumps).
The coilovers may have had their own bumpers on them, but they were never designed to work without proper bumpstops on the suspension itself.

Indeed.
This seems to be common with DB lifts. Too many misunderstandings are perpetuated about them to the point that few people bother to check to see what virtues they have to offer (which there are many). The only thing that should be of big concern to some people is the crossmember. Beyond that, most anything else can be dealt with, especially if one has the means to fab things like skidplates, gussets & such (or in this case, bumpstop extensions).