Any Adverse Affections of Wheel Spacers?

Why do you want bigger brakes anyway? Your tires determine the ultimate grip your brakes work with to stop you, and I guarantee if you stomp the pedal hard enough with your present setup, your antilock is going to negate anything larger brakes will potentially do. If you actually want better braking, add weight to the rear and change your brake bias to make the rear brakes work harder.

 

im too lazy to read all the replies.

i wanted to run it on my tacoma but ended up selling it (regret)....

benefits of the 4runner brake upgrade. the pads are pretty much the same, so you might stop a little bit shorter, but getting better tires will help that much better. the stock brake system is more the enough to stop the tacoma. you slam on the brakes and it will lock up the brakes with a stock brake system. doesnt matter if you have the stock brake set up or a $5000 brake system, it will stop almost the same. i said almost.....if you have bald tires, you wont stop.....if you have all terrain tires, you will stop quick enough......if you have grippy racing slick, you will stop much much quicker. so tires make a big diffrence in the stopping distance. tires only have so much grip to bring you to a stop


the point of having a bigger brake set up, like the 4runner system on tacoma, is the brake rotor is bigger....so that means you can stop over and over again for a longer period of time before the brake rotor overheats.

the stock tacoma breaks were good enough for me. they stopped me everytime and i never had brake fade, even loaded with fire wood which is heavy.

the reason i wanted to upgrade was that the stock rotor is small and will heat up and warp. so i was getting pulsating in my brake pedal every 10-15k miles. so i wanted to get a bigger brake system so i wont get that anymore. nobody localy in sacramento wants to resurface rotors anymore. used to get it done for $12 a rotor before and now only napa does it by me and they charge something like $32 a rotor.



and about running spacers......they wont help clear a brake kit. you will still need to run a bigger rim so clear the bigger rotor and caliper size.
but in my experince the spacers will give you a more harsh ride. i know people say they feel no diffrence, but...to each his own. i had a 4th gen 4runner and 2nd gen tacoma and i felt it on both. rides great...i run 1.5" spacer and the ride is garbage. take the spacers off, and the ride is good again.

 

Are you racing your truck? The only time frequent braking is enough to overheat the brakes is coming down from high speeds continuously, like on a race track, when they don't have time to cool between corners. Your front brakes do about 85% of your braking, they have vented rotors to help cool them. Unless you ride your brakes a lot, they won't get hot enough under normal driving and normal loads. You can risk overheating them if you're towing and don't have trailer brakes to help distribute the stopping load. I'm running 17" wheels with 265/70-17 all-terrains on my 2011 (with stock brakes) and I tow loads up to and slightly past my recommended max, although I don't tow the heaviest ones very far and rarely exceed 45 mph when I do. I have trailer brakes on one axle of the 18' flatbed and on both axles of the 6'x10' dump trailer. That's when you can overheat your truck's brakes pretty quickly if the trailer brakes aren't properly set. The guy who lives next door to me is a mechanic, runs his own shop and does a lot of brake work. He says the main way to warp a rotor is to get them hot and then sit with the brakes applied. The portion under the pads doesn't cool as fast as the rest of the rotor. Metallurgy has some to do with it too. I had a car that was bad to warp all four rotors, and it turned out to be the rotors themselves, as Ford eventually issued a recall for it on that model (Thunderbird Super Coupe)

How much firewood can you get in your Taco's bed, anyway? Unless you have the long bed, it's hardly worth the effort to load it, and if you get it as high as the top of your cab, you're overloaded.

 

brake rotors will warp when they go from hot to cold very quickly. so i would drive down from a fire look out tower near me, so i would have to brake here and there since im going downhill. then i hit a puddle and that will shock the rotors.

or even when you are just doing regular off roading, (i dont like rock crawling, i like fast speeds, like 40mph going over whoops) you hit a puddle here and there and that shocks the breaks.

and i live in a hilly area. we often go from 6500 feet to 200 feet elevation. i do downshift, but brakes are also used.

fire wood? i will load logs that are chopped...that are about 16"-20" long into the front of the bed....and i would have them up to the top of the roof (i have a camper shell) and that would bottom out my suspension on small bumps. I run Bilstein 5160 in the rear with arb medium pack in the rear.




so the 4runner bigger rotors will also get shocked when you go thru puddles and go down steep descents, but they wont be as hot. so giving them a bigger shot of not warping.

 

To be fair, I've overheated my brakes more than once coming down mountains in the Eastern Sierra (not towing, but decent amount of weight it the bed). It's not *just* racing that will overheat brakes in our trucks, especially given that, in my opinion, they are undersized for the truck from the factory.

 

I've been a 4-wheeler since the 1970's (see my avatar) and to be fair, travelling down a fire road and having to brake isn't going to heat your brakes very much; you're doing what? about 15-20 mph at most and if you are really experienced are using low range and a higher gear, letting the engine do most of the work. Hitting a puddle or going through a creek won't be a big temperature shock because the brakes aren't all that hot.
Coming down a long grade at highway speeds, don't you use a lower gear? Take it out of overdrive and use 4th (auto or manual) or even 3rd. I always let my engine and transmission do the hard work, and save the brakes. Hauling heavy loads with a trailer is a good way to learn braking techniques that save your brakes, you brake lighter and earlier so you don't have to cram them on at the last second to keep from rear-ending someone. You're also trying to keep the truck from a jackknife situation, and it carries over to regular driving.

This is related, but not specific; do you ever get behind someone in regular driving who for whatever reason is on and off their brakes trying to maintain the speed limit while going down a slight to moderate grade, while you are doing the same behind them and haven't touched your brakes at all? It's irritating as hell to me, not because they aren't speeding and I want to get around them, but just because they can't seem to maintain a speed on a hill without constantly using their brakes. I use mine when I need them, like coming to a complete stop or having to slow quickly for traffic or to change direction, like making a turn. Otherwise, I don't brake all that much, I'm using a hill to slow me, or downshifting to let the engine do the work.

 

I live in amongst 10K' mountains and they aren't near as hard on brakes as the 6~7K' eastern sierras were, those looong grades over the ranges almost mandates lower gear usage, I rarely feel the need to downshift in our mountains nor are they particularly hard on brakes but out there its a different story. Steep enough grades that I passed a bicyclist going 60mph coming down one of them.

 

You're definitely right about that. Last time it happened to me was coming over Sonora pass—about 9,600 ft in elevation and very steep going both up and down.

 

Well I would need to find a study that researches that to me the only way to get what i want if i go aftermarket performance setup would be to determine if the Stop Tech 6 piston calipers will fit my wheels.
Oddly enough though even with the 6 piston calipers looks like Stop Tech still uses the stock Taco rotor instead of going with the 4Runner 338 mm.

What would prevent me from keeping my stock Taco calipers but just putting 4Runner 338 mm rotors on ?? Does stock Taco caliper not allow a bigger rotor because I know my 16 in wheel would allow for a 338 mm rotor.

 

Pretty sure the minimum size for the Stoptechs with the 6 piston is 340mm. I would bet the stock 338mm would fit just may have slide pad overhang. Most of the 6 piston kits come standard with 355mm rotors. Also, the Stoptechs can fit with certain crazy size 16s but typically recommended to go with 17s. I think a better solution, unless you really need the performance of the 6-piston kit, is the simple bolt on 5th gen 4Runner calipers where you can run the 338mm factory rotors. I just sold a 6 piston stoptech setup because replacement rotors and pads was in the neighborhood of $600 alone. The full 5th gen caliper, rotor and pad setup was less.

 

Thats what i wanting to do but with my 16s not sure the 2011 4Runner caliper will fit or not, it will be close if they do thats for sure. But even if that did not work wondering if could just keep Taco calipers on but use a 338 mm rotor from 4Runner.

Can you not just use 338 mm rotors that are regular (not cross drilled or slotted) and then use regular brake pads with the Stop Tech caliper to decrease the cost ?

 

the only reason i dont want wheel spacers with my oem trd offroad 16" is because if you need to replace a CV i heard it makes the task a lot harder if not impossible on the trail

 

I have never used wheel spacers. I have used hub adapters. Hub adapters even come standard on certain types of dualie trucks.

MY biggest problem is that tire shops are getting risk of averse and will immediately freak the fuck out if they see them and refuse to work on my truck and I’ve had dealers snap the studs on them to the point I would carry spare studs because I am not waiting a few weeks to get a new sent shipped.

 

no they require special pads. You can use regular rotors if they are the correct size. Unsure if the 338s fit the stoptechs or not. If you were wanting to run the stoptechs though you could run the 4Runner ones instead and use regular pads and regular rotors which saves a ton of money. Don’t think either 5th gen 4Runner or stoptechs will fit with 16s unless they are a really weird size.

 

The Tacoma ABS brake system requires some sort of a special computer hooked up to the truck to properly bleed the ABS system. I haven't done that yet. The appointment for it is in an hour at my friend's offroad shop (Lifestyle Garage). I'm positive there is air in the system right now. Even with air in the system the brakes are already a LOT better than stock Tacoma brakes. Far less pressure on the brake pedal is required, it's not even close. I attribute most of the added braking power to the switch from a single 9" diaphragm brake booster to a dual 9" diaphragm brake booster.

 

From another thread he saying he couldnt bleed ABS because of computer or something.
They had changed the brake master cylinder.

 

If you want 4runner brakes so bad than get wheel spacers and make them fit. Multiple people have expressed their concerns about it not working out like you are hoping but that has not changed your thoughts, so just go for it. Do it and see if it improves your braking