Old-man Emu 2/1.5 Suspension Lift (read before you buy)

I would like to begin this review by explaining a bit about my truck and what I have done with it. First and foremost my truck has seen trails all over the country. My family and I live in Florida but we have gone on several cross country road camping trips. We make it a point to find hidden gems and free camp sites. Most places we go to are hard to reach and typically vacant of other people, but some places near national parks people are unavoidable.

The Tires
My truck has 285/75r16 BFG KO2s. They are heavy tires meant for drier conditions, though they have indeed seen snow and ice. The may be rated for snow but they don't handle well on ice. That's a review for a different time.

The Bumpers
Up front, I have a Lil'B Fab tube style front bumper. The bumper itself weighs somewhere along the lines of 120 pounds. It is winch-capable, but I do not have a winch. Careful trail choices have afforded me not to have one, this far at least. The bumper is solid, and Lil'B makes a very high quality product.

In the back I am running a Warfab high clearance tube style bumper with a tire swingout attachment. Warfab does good work, but I wager not at the level of quality or service as Lil'B. Furthermore, if I could take back my decision I would do without the swing-out attachment as it has generally hindered rather than helped me. This bumper probably weighs closer to 230 pounds.

The Bed
In the bed I have a Yakima heavy duty bed rack, supporting a James Baroud grand raid XL rooftop tent. This was a gift given to me by a friend of a client. It isn't something I would ever have purchased myself so I was happy to take off their hands. We haven't gone camping with it yet, as we generally go camping with a small old off-road pop-up camper we bought a couple years ago. The camper is listed at 165 pounds and the bed rack is somewhere around 60 pounds I think, making the combined total for the system to be about 225 pounds.

Suspension
So now you know what I carry and where I go with my truck. I am running Old-Man Emu Nitrocharger shocks and 888 coil springs. This design is rated for 2 inches of lift in the front, but with my bumper the actual lift is only about 1.5 inches.

In the back I have Old-Man Emu Nitrocharger shocks with the Icon 3-leaf AAL pack meant to raise the rear by 1.5 inches. This 1.5 inches is achieved on the stock Tacoma rear end weight, without the overload springs. With the overload springs it's 2 inches. I started off without my overload springs but quickly realized I was going to need them, so I reinstalled them.


My Review
If I haven't bored you yet, I commend you, because this is where my review of the Old-Man Emu shocks begins.

In short, the shocks are not that great. I spent almost a year researching when I was trying to decide what shocks I should use to upgrade my truck's suspension on a budget. The consensus at the time was an argument between OME Nitro shocks vs Bilstein 5100. As I write this review, I wish I had gone with the 5100s from the start. I'll get to that.

OME Nitrocharger shocks are twin tube shocks with Progressive valving. Progressive means the faster to input of bumps to the shocks, the more rigid they become due to the layout of the shim stacks inside the shock. In theory, this means the shocks are more firm for handling bumps off-road. The opposite is Digressive shocks (Bilsteins). Digressive means that faster motions are dampened less than slower motions. On paper that means they are loose for the smaller faster bumps, like what you see on-road. Digressive is better on road than Progressive for this reason.

This is where we come to why I think OME Nitros aren't that good. No matter how much off-road we do, we always spend more time on road to get there, or everywhere in between. On top of that, big off-road brands, like Icon, also use Digressive valving in their shocks, which means you can have a solid and smooth on-road ride, with strong and solid off-road shocks. Progressive valved shocks are good for only one thing, and they aren't even that good enough to outweigh the means.

One big flaw in the design of the OME shocks that I have found is that the tires have a tendency to skip around when driving over bumps on the road. This is due to the fact that they are Progressively valved. When you go over clefts in the road, the valving prevents the tires from dropping fully, and they lose contact. This can be dangerous for a number of reasons, but the main one is when taking a turn even at lower speeds. The rear end feels like it might actually slide laterally because of it. In the front, hitting bumps makes the steering wheel jerk around. I didn't realize how bad it was until I reinstalled my original TRD Off-road coilovers. I'll talk about that next.

Recently I put my original TRD Off-road shocks back on my truck. I lowered my front end back to its original ride height, but with the bumper. The front of the Tacoma has about 8-9 inches of wheel travel. From level ground to full droop, I get nearly 4 inches of down travel. This gives my front suspension 50/50 up and down wheel travel in with the original Tacoma OR coilovers. I'm okay with that. The reason I did this was mostly out of experimenting and I'm glad I did it. The 100 extra pounds from the front bumper is hardly noticeable. I put the original bilsteins back into the rear as well, and I kept the Icon AAL pack for the added weight of the rear bumper and bed rack, as well as the need for extra spring when towing and loading the bed. The truck handles 100% better with the original shocks, than it ever did with the OME Nitrochargers.

In summary, I believe the OME Nitrocharger shocks are not a fitting upgrade for Tacomas. Tacoma TRD off-road bilstein shocks are shockingly better. Digressive and linear valving are better for on-road, and maybe even off-road use, than Progressively valved shocks simply because they provide better stability. It could also simply be that the progressive valving in OME Nitros is too aggressive. Whatever the case may be, I feel safer without the Nitros.

 

I feel like something is going on with ARB. I've had Nitrocharger Sports on my 03 for 11ys. So I trusted them and spent big, but I am having a terrible time with the MT64 suspension. The coils are wonky & bent & rubbing the shock even though they're centered on the base and top hat.

I started a thread trying to figure it out, and here's where I'm at:

 

I actually recently upgraded to Bilstein 8100s between now and when I made the post and it's night and day better than stock.

But I will say, I also upgraded to a full leaf pack, and instead of 2 inches in the front like the OMEs I'm running 1.5 inches. I'm thinking the combination of running an AAL and 2 full inches in the front helped to contribute to my worse off experience with OME Nitros. The rear leafs with AAL are still less stable than a full leaf pack probably. And 2 inches is just too much for the front to be lifted, even with aftermarket UCAs. I've also been told that the preload ARB puts on the OME springs is pretty high, so that could be part of why it felt harsh for me.

I'm sure if I had run 886 springs instead of 887 it would have felt better. And if I had swapped to a new leaf pack it would have felt more stable in the rear. But there's no way for me to know! With the AAL in place and the stock Bilstein (TRD OR) shocks installed in the rear, the rear handled road ruts better, especially when turning. There's a spot on my way to work where I turn and there's a series of clefts in the road about two inches wide and an inch or two deep that I kinda use as a comparison. The stock shocks just felt more planted in that scenario.

 

That does seem odd though. It's still a good reliable brand for most people. Does it have anything to do with the spring seat and top hat positions?