BDS 4" or 3" OME/bilstein/icon/toytec

Just buy an OME kit, roughly $1k to your door and a few hours with another set of hands and it's installed. I've wheeled the shit out of OME, run 35" tires with front and rear lockers. If it's a pavement pounder (only assuming since the avatar pic) you will be fine.

 

I am very happy with my choice of going with BDS. I personally was able to do all the work myself and luckily have a good friend who welds. So being quoted for lift install and the weld work can be shocking.

However, like others have said..depends on what you intend to use the truck for. I am able to do a little bit of everything without sacrificing ride quality, ball joint angles, loss of down travel, etc.

 

Not, always the case. In other ways you gain clearance in vitals areas. There's places where my 3" lift would have got me high centered. Now I dont have that issue

 

Btw did you regear? I wanna run 35's eventually but some say regear some say don't.

 

I was just shocked that that was the price and I'm not getting new coils. Just dropping the front end of the truck several inches. I can't tell what I wanna do now lmao.

 

No one says don't regear with 35s, if they do it's because they don't want to fork out the money, do the install, or something else. Regear is a must with 35s IMO. 4.56s with a manual tran, its the way to go.

 

Yeah that's way down the road then haha. I have automagic.

 

4.88s then, but people will argue that one though

 

4.56s, nitro brand with no issues.

 

Bahaha because of auto I get it! I just didn't wanna deal with a clutch in the trails.

Cool deal.

 

If you are able to or can it can be installed by yourself. I installed my kit by myself with a floor jack and basic tools. The only welding that would need to be done is the 2 small tabs that gets attached to the lower ball joint steering stop. I didn't even install these on mine as I didn't feel it was needed. As far as an alignment after you install the kit you can take it to any firestone, tires plus etc and get a lifetime alignment. If you plan on any wheeling this will pay for itself many times over. 3450 installed is quite high in my opinion.

 

You have to remember that if he's been doing it for a long time he's probably seen some really bad IFS designs that are REALLY prone to popping CVs.

The S10 ZR2s used to come with a 2" lift over a normal S10 and were already kind of at the limit from a CV angle standpoint. The common lifts (under 6") would provide re-indexing keys for the torsion bars to allow you to crank up the effective spring rate for more lift. What that did was just flat out stress the CV angles to the point of breaking under full extension. Part of the problem was that the spring rate got so high that it would violently snap between compressed and uncompressed as soon as it hit bumps in the road or caught any air offroad because of the high spring rate. It would ride like shit and be prone to failure.

For those setups, a drop-bracket lift (~5-6" usually) were the way to go because it put your suspension geometry back into alignment and gave you the lift without any increase in ground-crossmember clearance. It just gave you the ability to run larger tires for the clearance.

It seems that with the Tacoma world the CVs are a little stronger and the idea of modifying the front suspension with just a new upper control arm and coilovers still allows a close-enough geometry to stock to not destroy CV angles. Part of what helps is the longer coilover without an increase in spring rate.

I don't see many posts about guys grenading CV shafts or ball joints on these forums with a UCA + coilover lift (Basically any 3" lift you'll see, OME, Toytec, whatever). If it was more of a problem I'd imagine we'd see more posts about it.

I think the guy at your shop is trying to look out for you in general, but unless he's worked on a bunch of second gen tacomas I wouldn't worry too much about his advice on a drop-bracket lift. I'd especially stay away from any spacer lifts that just do a leaf-block and a coil-spacer.

I haven't bought anything, but after looking around I think the ideal setup for these trucks seems to be a new coilover up front with UCA and then in the rear a new leaf pack like a Dakar leaf pack. No spacers, just good quality suspension-travel increasing parts.

 

Firestone by me is terrible with lifted trucks. I mean I guess I can try it. I'd also rather do the RCD bilsteins then a freaking spacer on stock coils. Now I'm just torn because all I read is good things about the OME lifts and such but I feel like people wheel the shit out of them and the harsh angles aren't really a problem. Either way I have time to think about it I'm just trying to get all the info I can on both types before I pull the trigger.

 

Yeah that's what I'm thinking, he works on a ton of them but most of them look like they just want height out of them because they have the money to blow and they aren't really wheeling them. I haven't seen any posts about people messing up CV's unless they're going super hardcore rock crawling but there's also the aftermarket CV option.