Wisconsin Tacomas and bad financial advice

I suppose now would be a bad time to say he tested this on ….wait for it….his FJ!

 

It’s also worth investigating why they are failing. Are seals blowing out? Shafts nicked up causing leaks? There’s various causes and solutions pending why they are actually failing

or maybe he just needs double bypasses on each corner with resis. Plus boots / shields for safety.

 

I thought the front was the better one to delete. The front sway bar is more of a restriction than the rear (on non-KDSS 4Runners).

But, some are saying that overall flex is better with a rear sway bar than with none. I don't see how that's possible.

And, yeah, if I wanted the best flex while maintaining somewhat decent road manners, I'd go with a regular sway bar setup, and delete the front. I'd delete my rear sway bar, but my understanding is that the front sway bar is dependent on the rear in my case.

 

I got my fingers crossed-up...see my edit.

 

The FJ Cruiser isn't worthy of the "FJ" name. No offense. They're cool, and all. They're just not "FJ" cool.

 

When a guy I used to race with would call something FJ, it meant f&cking junk.

 

Maybe he needs some heavier springs. Or maybe there’s something off with the suspension geometry one way or the other causing the shock to bottom out on either end and blow it out when he goes full send

 

I'm just talking about overall suspension articulation. I am not talking about what's the best balance of this or that. I still say that there is no way that having a sway bar provides better overall articulation than having none.

 

Easy to digest? Speak for yourself…I have to have a pen and note pad at the ready, and use the pause/rewind constantly in order to keep up. And when I read one of his charts, my mouth moves as I’m reading the numbers and words. And I’m pretty sure my tongue is sticking out slightly whenever I’m just listening

 

Watching his truck work in KY, it looked like everything was working really well. Maybe he is bottoming in certain situations? Maybe a taller bumpstop would reduce the hit a little?

 

Articulation doesn’t do you any good if you roll over. To get the most suspension travel, you stay flat with droop + stuff.

 

The front suspensions on 4runners and probably all toyota IFS are lazy bums that literally don’t compress unless forced. They’ll happily sit at their normal ride height all day long if you allow the rear axle to do all the work.

 

It might look like it, but really the only way to know is to cycle it in a controlled environment like on a rack.

or have someone do a tear down to see why the shocks failed.

 

That's not what I'm getting at, though.

It seems logical that the maximum overall articulation would be achieved by deleting both sway bars, so that both axles will only be limited by down travel and the bump stops.

Whether or not that's an ideal setup is irrelevant.

Personally, if doing it all over again, I'd likely opt for a non-KDSS OR and run a similar suspension to what I have, with a deleted front sway bar.

 

KDSS 4Runners behave as though the front sway bar is deleted. We're only restricted by the rear sway bar at low speed.

 

It might be worth sending them in for a proper post mortem inspection just to see if there is evidence the problem is something to do with topping out or over-compression.

 

In a solid f&r axle in the perfect situation, sure that could be plausible.

that doesn’t apply to IFS though.

 

This is exactly what mine is doing. I have played with putting the shifter into neutral. Not sure if that actually helps or not.

 

Sure it does. The front sway bar limits articulation on non-KDSS 4Runners. So, a front sway bar delete improves articulation. The rear sway bar also limits articulation. So, deleting that also allows better articulation.

Or, maybe the regular rear sway bar allows full articulation. either way; the sway bar isn't adding more flex.

 

I pulled the terminals on mine and cleaned with contact cleaner. That didn't fix it.