Beefing up my 2 Door Taco

Took some new photos of my truck today:

 

I would drive it stock, and think about upgrading to a prerunner. To have a good driving experience with a more "beefy" truck, it just makes more sense financially - and practically, to trade it in + cash on a prerunner.

Here are a few more points:

1. Mods "value" is completely subjective to a future buyer. Generally, a seller loses their mod money - hence so many "part outs". The Prerunner holds its value better.

2. Prerunner's drivetrain is designed to support the added stress and rotational mass. The truck will be safer, and fairly well powered.

3. You gain options too; power windows, maybe even an extended cab. These you don't get by staying with a lifted base.

4. Higher resale, and larger market - if and when you decide to sell the truck.

 

+1

And it's really not that simple to lift the rear of the 5-lug.
Blocks won't do it... rearched springs or a shackle flip are the only way to go, and the shackle flip is going to be like a 6" lift.

And again, you're back to needing a regear, and STILL major power and economy loss spinning larger, heavier tires.

There are some sweet offroad 5-lug trucks on this forum, and every one of them had had several thousand dollars put into it.... and you're talking about basically just building a mall-crawler.
Trade it on a Prerunner and you're set right out of the box.

 

Selling my truck/buying another one isn't an option for me. And why won't a simple 3" spacer work?

 

Rear springs are under the axle.
3" spacer will LOWER it by 3".

And you can't (safely) lift the front of a 5-lug more than about 1.5"-2" without major mods.

 

Could I lift the entire truck 2 inches safely? Also, I cleaned my battery today and it doesn't always start immediately, do I need to tighten the terminals more?

 

2" is absolute max without replacing the upper control arms, and even at 2" you may not be able to get it to align properly.

And at 2", it's going to look like absolute shit with small tires.
Even if you push it to 30", the 2" lift is going to be excessive and the tires are not going to fill the wheelwells.
30" tires are going to kill your fuel economy, and you're going to be complaining BIGTIME about it's lack of power/acceleration.

It's a 5-lug.
The black truck that you posted in the first post is a Prerunner or a 4x4.
You can NOT get anything even close to that look without spending some SERIOUS money.
Simple weekend bolt-ons are not going to do it.

What you are envisioning is just not going to happen with the truck you are starting with, and you are not going to be happy with the compromises you are going to have to make to get the look that you want.

Plain and simple... you bought the wrong truck for what you want to do.
You bought a basic "work" truck. It's a reliable, economical, and useful truck. It's not an off road crawler and will not look like one without spending a LOT of money.

Here's my '94 5-lug (not me in the pic).
Those are 30" tires. No lift on the truck.
Power sucked, fuel economy sucked.

Now imagine that truck sitting 2" higher on the same tires.

 

Then what size tires wouldn't look like shit, but has good power (idgaf about fuel Econ) I really think my wheels and tire size make my truck look bad...

 

Anything larger than stock is going to hurt power and economy.
The 2.7 is anemic enough with the stock 215s
235's will fill out the wheelwells nicely, look good without a lift, and are generally considered to be the largest you can go without seriously hammering power (but you WILL feel it, especially at higher elevations).

 

What exactly would the difference in power be? Just doesn't pull as hard or what?

 

Put a golf ball under your accelerator, then go try to maintain 80 on the road to and from Waco.

"Pull as hard"? You can feel "pull" now?

That grey truck, I had to downshift to maintain 70 on even small hills.

Also, oversized tires will throw your speedometer off. Right now, it's about 4mph fast... when it reads 70, you're doing about 66.
Larger tires will reverse that error. 235'a will go just a bit beyond correcting it, but won't put you into ticket territory unless the cop is looking for a reason to pull you over.

 

Mines an automatic. And I don't quite understand your golf ball analogy :/ I'm probably just going to go with 235's I feel like I can deal with the cons

 

He saying that you'll have the pedal floored, but the max will not be as fast as it is now.

 

Just another $500-800 that could be used to get you into the truck you're going to buy eventually anyways.

 

Well I'm a 17 y/o senior in highschool, I'm going to have this truck for ATLEAST 5-6 more years.

 

Check out these 5 luggers:

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/member.php?u=56727

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/member.php?u=68834

 

Nice trucks.
That's the Fatbob lift.

And I'd hate to drive either of those with stock gearing if I lived anywhere but Kansas.

 

I went to discount tires yesterday after school and got a quote for 235/70/17


The -$95 is because I might go with 225/60/17 instead. And I'm thinking about going with these wheels

What do y'all think?

 

Seriously man... You're going to dump a shitload of money that you don't have into that truck turning it into something that you will hate to drive, and the $2000 that you're going to put into tires and wheels is going to take $1000 off of what you'll get for it when you decide to sell it.

 

My fog light came in today, installing them this weekend. Just fit one in for a pic