The Build

great post, well photographed + written.... and it addressed my personal needs to see a side by side for the 255 / 285 with stock as a reference. Damn well done!

Thank you for taking the time to put it together and sharing the knowledge

 

Glad to be of help - I try to think of stuff that I wish I had going into a project, then make a post to help the next guy. My hope is that the more giving back we all do, the smarter we all become and the easier it is to get it all right!

 

OK, well this weekend was a life experience.

For the past two weeks I have been lining up plans to do my lower ball joints. Based on recommendations from the DIY guides, they said to do bushings on the LCAs as well.

I tried to line up a shop to do it, but my guy up here didn't send me a quote until too late, and my guy in Salem was out over the weekend. As a result, Dad and I fired up the courage to do it ourselves.

I bought Moog ball joints (K80827) from Rock Auto. These have a greaseable zerk fitting, which is an improvement over stock.
I was going to get bushings from Rock Auto as well, but they sold out. Thankfully, Jorge at Camelback Toyota came through, and gave me a deal that beat all other competition!

Dad meanwhile bought every tool Harbor Freight had for doing bushings and ball joints. Our thought was to have all the tools ready and take back what we didn't use. We had a (looks like a giant c-clamp), a , a pickle fork, and some other stuff.

We started Saturday morning. Put the whole front on jack stands and started with the passenger side.
Got the LCA out, no probs. Decided to start with the bushings, then work on the BJ last.
Well, we found out we didn't have the right tools at all, because the bushings have a lip that is wider than the hole for the LCA, so you can't grip it to push it out. Even if we could, the tools from Harbor Fright don't match all our bushings - only the ball joint, and only if we had bought an additional $90 kit. We proceeded to cut and drill the rubber to try pushing out the core and then cut out the remainder, but there was no budging that core.

We switched to the ball joint. Our ball joint kit didn't have any of the right parts, so we tried our 3 arm puller. We had so much torque going on that we were using a 4 foot cheater bar. Eventually, we sheared the metal on the puller. (Surprisingly, we found this the easiest part to remove later on).



At 1 pm and out of options, we raced around town for tools or an open machine shop. Couldn't find anything. Ended up going home at about 5pm. On the way home, we visited a neighbor at the end of the block. Talking with him, he said, "yeah, Bob at the end of the road has his own machine shop, probably has the tools you need"


Indeed, Bob had just what we needed - a 20 ton press, very similar to this.



He didn't have the exact stuff we needed to properly support the arm for pressing, but we had various steel blocks to shim it up the way we needed.
Those ball joints were frozen in there like nothing we've ever seen. That bottle jack was doing serious work, and the bushing core would sink halfway down before the bushing would extract. When the bushings came out, KABOOM! They would fly down like shot out of a cannon. The ball joint wasn't as bad, but still took a lot of force.

The first bushing below is where we drilled and cut it before giving up on hand tools; the rest were taken straight to the press. After 60k miles, these bushings were rusted in there, which is no wonder why we had to use the press. Looking at some of them, they were probably in fine shape, but I already had the parts and already nuked one of the bushings. Might as well do the rest.







Getting the bushings in was much easier, which we also did on the press. It still took a lot of pressure, but we greased everything up in copper anti-seize grease for protection and better install.

We called it a night at about 8:00 or so.

Sunday was more of the same. We started at about 9am, tapping the ball joints for hte zerks, putting in the zerks, putting on the passenger side and taking off the driver side. I had to leave at 10 for a date, so we stopped, but picked up again around 1pm.
Of course, we couldn't remember exactly what pieces of scrap metal we used last night, and in what configuration, so it took us some figuring to undo the next set (which were frozen in even worse). We got that done about 5pm.
We got the driver side put all on and started lowering the driver side. When we got to the ground, we noticed that the suspension wasn't flexing. We raised it up, loosened all the cam bolts, prodded the control arms, and lowered again, all to the same effect. At this point we started panicking, because we raised that side up and a lowered the other, which did the same thing. We couldn't figure out what to do, and devised a plan for removing the shock setup, taking the coils off and trying to compress by hand to see if the the shocks were froze. Knowing this was going to take several more hours, we started heading in to eat dinner. Just as we started taking gloves off, etc., I thought that we might as well lower the whole truck down and see if the suspension would free up slowly as we sat inside.

As soon as a little weight started hitting BOTH tires, the suspension started compressing! Apparently the weight on one side isn't enough. We re-timed the cam bolts and tightened the whole mess down to to torque spec, and went inside about 7pm.

If any of you want your bushings done, you can all screw off. Never again unless I have a full on shop.

 

Might be bugging you about details on your rear leaf resuscitation project, mine sag with two grocery bags in the back...

Are you happy with the end result?

 

Haven't done rear. Figured having one vehicle + semi-experimental project was too much.
Instead I am installing famous fab shackle flip, then looking at custom springs from spring-man.com

 

Note to self: Need to start researching switches. I want a rocker/lighted-style switch for the fogs (so I don't accidentally leave it on), plus I need one for the ABS kill.

Current list for research:

OTRATTW: V1D1J66B-AFCN5-17U or V1D1FNTB-SPST
Why can't this be orange/orange? It's so perfect!!
Toyota part PT297-35070-SH-AS. Same as original, but with a light. SPENDY
Toyota part 00550-35976, this is a rocker with a light. Doesn't match as well
This one isn't bad, but doesn't have a standby light

 

Look up OTRATTW.

 

that was the first site I saw but I forgot about them in the migraine haze I had today. I'll add it to my list!

... did a bit of searching, and I think I found what I want as well.. V1D1J66B-AFCN5-17U or V1D1FNTB-SPST

I might go nuts and get in-cab winch controls. Man, I'm gonna need a mod day!

 

Truck is sweet man!

 

Famous Fab Shackle Flip


I'm not sure what exactly set it off, but at some point I noticed that the rear end of the truck was much too low. I was somewhere between even height front and rear to maybe a little nose-high. Personally, I like the factory rake. It maintains what little aerodynamics this brick has to offer. I'd like to maybe get some rear armor eventually too, which will bring down the rear further, and eventually I'll just be scooting around like a dog on the carpet if I don't do something.

This is where my rear end was sitting (measurement is taken from bottom of rim to bottom of fender flare)



My grand plan to combat this has been to do the following:
1. replace springs (read about the junkyard springs in my build to see my pre-attempt)
2. rear armor?

As I was reading about springs, I found out that I should probably do a shackle flip as well. If you haven't been under the rear of your truck where the spring meets up with the frame, it's time to look. You will notice that the spring attaches to a shackle, which sits in a 'cup', and the cup mounts up to the frame (below are side and rear shots)





From what I understand, Toyota did this because when the truck leans on a corner, the shackle's downward motion will be prevented by the cup. This acts as a cheap rear anti-sway bar. I'm not sure how much I believe that, because it would have to most likely be a really hard corner. I do see that it allows them to manufacture a shorter spring and might prevent some body roll offroad...?

Anyway, a shackle flip does exactly what it's name implies - it flips the shackle around, so that basically the spring is below the cup, rather than above (you'll see later)
The benefits are:
-added rear axle droop offroad: you get more articulation, always a good thing
-a cheap lift (I was quoted 1")
The good thing about this is that even though Toyota sees this as a reversed shackle, the rest of the world sees this as a normal spring mount. If you hop under a Jeep, an old FJ, or your dad's old truck, you will probably see the shackle hanging exactly opposite to how your Taco is fitted up. That means that there is no real safety concern or such - we are just making a truck back into a truck

So, first was buying the part. I managed to coax Famous Fabrication into making me a set (only one is pictured). notice the holes at the bottom - this is for adjusting where the shackle will install. You can move forward or back depending on the spring angle you need. This will be nice in case I do need to change springs still.



To do the install, I headed to my buddy 55chevy05taco to get some work done. We went through the following process:

1. Raise up the rear end just enough to take all the weight off the springs (we did just enough to get the rear wheel spinning by hand)
2. Remove bolt connecting shackle to the cup shackle mount cup
3. Cut off and remove the rivets that hold the factory shackle mount (4 per mount)
4. Mount the new shackle mount. For us, we need to use a cheater bar to force the spring down out of the way. Once the new mount is in position, let off the cheater bar. The spring will come up and act as a helping hand to pin the shackle mount to the frame until you have it attached. Instead of rivets, you will be using grade 8 bolts with nylock nuts
5. Position the shackle into the mount and line it up with one of the holes. Insert your shackle bolt. You should be able to get it in on the inside hole and through most of the shackle, but it won't line up with the outside hole just yet.
6. SLOWLY lower the rear end. As the weight comes back on to the springs, the shackle will scoot itself into position. Raise and lower the rear until you line up and can get the bolt all the way through
7. Get brutal with the socket wrenches and tighten everything up

I was told that you could cut off the rivets with either an angle grinder, an air chisel, or a plasma torch. NOTE: if you use the air chisel, you need to put a temporary block/brace inside the c-channel of your frame so the frame doesn't bend!!
I was told the plasma torch was easiest, but my resident welding expert, 55chevy05taco, found this to be easier said than done. Using the plasma to cut off the rivet heads was no problem, but the rivets were still solidly held into the frame. Attempting to hammer them out was impossible. Eventually he ended up using an oxy-acetaline torch to heat the remainder of the rivet to red hot, then pound it out. I'm really grateful to having his help, it's a brutal effort.



Here is the finished product (NOTE: incorrectly installed! Keep reading!!). Note you can see the passenger side in the distance. We weren't sure which hole I should be using, but I remember most everyone else using the third hole, so we went with that. If I find more information, I will try to post it back here.



After we were done, we were very surprised by the difference. Performing the same measurement showed I had a gain of a little over 2 inches!
This picture was shot right after the install. After about 29 hours, it's still at 34 1/8"



With this much gain, I think I may hold off on any spring upgrades, and instead shift my focus on a rear bumper first I can get the extra weight of the bumper added, see what difference it causes, then determine what I need to do. I've had an idea of having custom leafs made, and I'd like the shop to know exactly what they need to fab.


Here's some before and after shots, as best as I could do. It doesn't look like much from this, but in person it was a humongous change.





As another point of reference, here's a shot of me. I'm 5'11", and I now have to reach my arm straight across to get anything in the bed.



For driving, I can't say I've noticed much change on pavement. The drive home from the shop last night was so rainy that I had everything on high and I was having trouble seeing the road markings, so I didn't try to do anything but survive the trip home However, I can say that it isn't any drastic change. Things were fine at highway speed and going through roundabouts. Might be a little extra lean. I will say the rear hunkers down a little during heavy acceleration, which is kinda cool


Continued....

After some helpful input from members here and the Gitout.com forum members, I learned that the shackle was mounted incorrectly:
- It was backwards. I needed to rotate the shackle 180 degrees on the Z axis
-I selected the wrong hole. The hole I chose above makes the shackle look as if it were at full extension


Last night with BensonX's help, we made the adjustments. It went really easy! We jacked up the truck so the spring was unweighted, then unbolted the shackle. Next, we put a bottle jack between the spring and the frame of the truck to bend the spring back. From there, it was an easy job of remounting things!
Note that the shackle bolts get torqued to 89 ft-lbs as per the Toyota FSM.
If you look, you may see that I might need aftermarket shackles. The factory shackle flares out as it fits to the spring. When the spring compresses, the shackle will move backward and smack the mount. I'll need to do research on that it seems.




Final measurement. I'll say the ride might be a slight bit sharper over on-road bumps, but not anything drastic. Can't wait for some real testing!

 

Thanks, sorry I didn't say so sooner!

 

You need to move to the first hole. The way you have your shackles set you are not getting any "droop" range out of them. For the most part you are at full extension right now. If viewing the shackles as a right angle, your shackles should be at about 45 degrees. At full droop they should be at at 90 degrees.

 

Yep, just got the same info from Gitout
Thanks for watching out - back to work for me!

 

No problem. While you're at it, the shackle needs to be rotated 180 degrees. The backing plate should be facing the rear of the truck.

 

Hehe I'm getting schooled on that as well. The guys are saying that the best mount hole would probably be between the first and second hole, but this mount design doesn't give me any options to shift things.

My main concern at this point is having to try to arch the springs enough to get the shackle attached to that first hole - imagine trying to turn the springs from a U shape into a V shape. Hoping I don't have to get creative.

 

I actually typed out that the best place would be between the first and second hole but didn't see that helping you so I erased it.

It sounds like you need slightly longer shackles. Your springs might be too long to fit into the first hole.

 

Fixed, but now I'm not sure if it's resting on the shackle?

 

What do you mean?

 

I need to go back out to check, but I believe the shackle is pressed up against the mount, or will easily be that way under a little bit of flex.

Also, angle is too extreme and I'll have to cut off the bottom and weld new steel to get a bolt at a position 'between' hole 1 and 2

 

Got a picture of what it looks like?