Long Travel BS Thread

May your houses be visited by many brown santas bringing gifts of suspension travel to be placed underneath the tree of tubes and body panels we like to call our trucks.

 

Hahaha havent seen any brownish dudes coming to my porch

 

Let's talk pinion angles. What did you guys measure at ride height?

I took ride height measurements before tearing everything apart but cannot for the life of me find the paper I wrote them down on. Installing a JD SUA kit with the frame brace. Currently have the leafs torn apart to cycle.

Do you happen to have your ride height measurements?

 

2 degrees down is what I did when I put in the ford 9. Prior to that I had the stock axle at 5.5 down because that’s what Toyota had it set at. Went with 2 degrees at JDfabs suggestion.

 

Do you happen to have your ride height measurements? I'll set the angle to 2* but don't really want to put the leafs back together to just get ride height.

Thanks for the input

 

Any suggestion on where you want me to measure to get ride height.

 

What did you use? I’m guessing something consistent so I can measure on my truck.

Top of axle housing to bottom of frame?

 

The degree is relative to the front section of the driveshaft (and or transmission output) at ride height. So unfortunately it depends on exactly the height your truck is gonna sit at with your leaf pack and your setup. The before measurement actually doesn't even matter anymore. It's good to know for reference but the measurement with your current setup is the one you need. If you wanna get it right, weight and setup variances will be too much to copy someone else even with the same leafs. On the other hand the pinion angle can be set after cycling and checking clearance. If it all fits and cycles correctly, it's still going to fit with the pinion a few degrees up or down. Just leave the perches and everything tacked but not fully welded until you can set it down at full weight with leafs assembled - then come back and adjust the perches and fully weld them. Might take a couple tries to rotate it the correct amount but it's not much extra work to do this and weld it all last. Since it will affect the shock perch's location if you do it this way, you'll need to get your measurement for it's location relative to another part on the truck so that you can adjust it the correct amount when rotating the axle. IE: know where your shock mount hole is at 12in droop to the frame rail when it's set correctly so your shock doesn't hit and then you'll be able to jack the axle back to that height to make sure it still has proper clearance after you've assembled the leafs and rotated the axle and perches to get the pinion angle right. Also know where they land horizontally relative to the brake drum backing or something so they don't accidentally get pushed left or right too much when adjusting the pinion angle

 

At ride height with the full weight of my junk resting we set the flange at 0° then rotated the flange up to get 3° and burned everything in. Ill get what the angle is now at tonight. This was with the leaf lack intact. Ian had the whole process looking too easy. That reminds me, I need to schedule a weekend with them to get the front end dialed now that I have the new machined Misalignments and the correct Coil Overs.

 

So I was told my setup should yield about 1.5 inches of lift over stock. Should I set axle tube 9.5-10 inches from bottom of frame and set basic pinion angle there? Stock tube to frame is 8 inches so setting it at 10 would be 2 inches over stock. I have a baseline of 4.5° that I took before, and never had any vibes.

 

Question for you electrical wizards. I made a choice to run no taillights, instead I'm running a chase bar with built in turn, reverse, brake and running lights. As I'm tapping into the OEM harness, the brake lights simply don't work.

I wired up everything else, turn, reverse and running.

What's even weirder is that my 3rd brake light doesn't even work. Yes the truck was running.

I thought that was super weird, so I connected the wire to the trailer brake pin connector, and it ended up working.

Anyone know what's up?

 

I pretty much did the same thing. Couldn't figure out why the voltmeter at the tail light plug had volts but a light wouldn't work. I too connected to the trailer plug. I work in serviced at the dealer and didn't even bother to ask the techs since it works with the trailer plug.

 

Very interesting. Thanks for that. Does ur 3rd brake light work?

 

Top of axle to bottom of frame is 7.5 inches

 

I'll have to pull the diagram/ color code I drew up when I get back from holiday travels. I chopped the entire harness at the back of the cab and made an entirely new one. Eliminated a ton of redundancy. Cut out something like 30% or the wire count needed for the rear lights, fuel system, and trailer plug. If I remember correctly, I found that the brake lights are ground switched, as opposed to all of the other lights which have constant ground, and power switch. Trailers don't always have a constant hots however, so the trailer brakes are on a traditional power switch, meaning a second brake light circuit from Toyota.
So I ended up doing exactly what you did, removing the factory taillight brake circuit, and running from the trailer plug wiring. In fact, except for turn signals, I combined everything for the trailer and tail light chase bar. Since standard trailer lights use the brake light as the turn signal, if you combine those too, it'll flash your brake lights and turn signals together on the chase bar when you hit the turn signals.

 

Is that measurement with your dmz kit?

 

Thank you sir, very helpful!

 

This is with 2 full size spares and pair of spare spindles bolted down to the back side of the tire carrier. The rear shackle hanger is all the way forward and set at the lower hole.

 

yes it does. I guess not sure why.
Also note, I'm using led brake/tail lights, no chase bar, and I was getting hyperflash so I had to put resisters inline to slow the flash.