How to: Front shock/spring removal

Glad it worked out for you. Now on to the pics!

 

This might be a tad off topic but when swaping out UCA's, the part of the factory arm with the ball joint is that attaches to the knuckle/spindle?? When you take that nut off, does the ball joint assembly just lift out/up with a little tap on the bottom of the shaft where the nut was?

I thought I read somehere where you can do that but it will rip the factory boot on the ball joint? Don't really care about the boot but trying to make sure I don't need some kind of special tool/press to take the factory UCA out.

 

I disconnected the ball joint/UCA from the spindle when I swapped out my shocks and coils as Chris 4x4 recommended and the threaded shaft will come out, but it needs a little love. Some firm taps with a hammer and a piece of wood in between (to protect the threads) worked just fine.

 

Cool. I'm just trying to nail everything down before I order stuff. I always try to make sure when I'm doing something myself that I've never done before, that I can do the entire process without any/many hicups.

If my car sells this Saturday, I'm going to be ordering an a$$ load worth of stuff for the truck.

I talked myself out of a 6" lift for several reasons. One being Fabtech has not tried fitting their 6" to a 2009 reg cab. I've been asking them for months and still no answer and I don't want to be their guinne pig. They said something about the rear impact thing may require special fabbing. Naw enough 'special' fabing to go 6 inches as is, without doing more ghetto stuff to the truck. Plus I don't wanna spend the money to regear my 4 banger. The list of reasons goes on....

I'm going with King RR's front and rear and ICON UCA's. Then after I throw that stuff on, I'm going to have to do something with the rear leafs to soften up the stock ride quality if possible, since I never haul anything in the back.

Wondering if removing the factory overload leaf would do it or should I look into a whole leaf pack setup?

 

I have the Revtek 1.25" block on the rear with the factory leafs. If I removed the overload leaf, would that lower the rear height down to about 1" worth of lift with that 1.25" block and the overload leaf removed? Would that soften up the rear end and still give me 1" worth of lift? The overload leaf is about 1/4" thick? I know blocks are not recomended but aftermarket leaf packs seem to want to make noise. I know I will probablly have some noise from time to time with the ICON arms but would like to at least keep the rear quiet and as plush as possible. Not sure if removing the overload leaf and using the block will achieve this nicer ride quality?

With this lame Revtek the front and rear are equally harsh. I know why the front is so harsh but since it has a 1.25" block in the back, blocks are not suppose to change the factory ride characeristics, from what I heard. So I'm guessing the rear was this harsh when it was at stock height.

ICON has this...

http://outlawoffroadstore.com/23783/72/223/3485/2009_TOYOTA_TACOMA_2.7_L4_GAS.html

But it lifts the rear 1.5". I only want about 1" of lift in the back, so that I can get close to leveling the truck. If I go over 1" in the back, I need to crank the coilovers up beyond 3" just to get close to leveling it. I want to end up with about .5" of rake and no more.

This is why I was thinking maybe I could just loose the overload and keep the 1.25" block, so that I can almost level out the truck and not go over 3" in the front.

 

I'm starting to think it might be easier to just go with the hole stage 4 kit and use the ICON RR coilovers instead of the Kings.

Or I could get the Kings and order the ICON arms and icon leafs seperately. wondering if the King RR rear shocks are worth the extra $400 over the ICON RR shocks.

 

CHRIS! any chance you could add torque specs for the front suspension to this? I'm installing my lift this evening and would like to torque things properly.

 

Sweet... thanks. I think i need to get a smaller torque wrench for the smaller parts. No way im getting my 1/2" torque wrench in some of these places.

 

Ok, here are the pics that I took while replacing the front shocks on my Taco. Overall the process was pretty simple, you just have to make sure that you are thinking a couple of steps ahead. I used the links that chris4x4 posted out of the FSM, but I disconnected the UCA instead of the Tie rod end sub-assembly. I apologize in advance for some of the pics being taken out of order.

Just a once over of all the moving pieces involved. I made sure I could ID all of the parts prior to starting:



Remove the stabilizer link and stabilizer bar. The link is only held on by a nut and should come out easily. Remove the engine under cover in order to get to the stabilizer bar brackets and remove the stabilizer bar.



Next, disconnected the UCA as per chris4x4's suggestion. Pliers will get the retaining pin off and the castle nut will come off easily enough. As discussed previously, some force will be required to get the bolt through. A piece of wood in between the bolt and the hammer protected the treading and the bolt popped right out. Be prepared to support the LCA because it will put tension on the brake lines once the shock comes out. If you tie it up like in the picture, use something heavier than the regular zip ties shown.



Remove the 3 nuts on the top of the shock and coil spring assembly, pretty easy. DO NOT REMOVE THE CENTER NUT (as pictured).



Remove the lower shock bolt. Remove the nut and washer and be prepared to tap the bolt through.



Remove the Shock and Coil Spring Assembly. May take some manipulation. It helped to tie the spindle to the UCA so that the LCA could be lowered as far as possible without straining the brake lines. Just make a loop connecting the two that allows for the most space between the two without putting tension on the break lines. My apologies for not getting a picture of this.

Take the Shock and Coil assembly to a garage that will change out the shocks for you. I contemplated trying to do it myself, but the thought of losing life, limb, or eyesight was just too much. Savannah Tire did it for $50 and before lunch. Just make sure that the reassembled shock and coil assembly look like the ones that you handed them.




Reassembly, is simply a reverse process. Just keep in mind that the LCA will have to come down quite a bit. Once the shock and coil assembly is seated at the top, tying the spindle to the UCA as before should help.



Hope this helped. If there is anything additional that I can think of, I will post it later. If anybody finds that I missed something or something doesn't pass the common sense test let me know. Good Luck.

 

Great stuff.
I will be doing the 5100s next week on my 2nd gen.
Practiced on my son's 02 prerunner last week. Picked up a nice set of slightly used fronts with OME 880s on them.
Everything went smooth. I went to Pepboys and was quote $20.00 each to take the springs apart and when I bring them back ( I had to move the heigth for his truck setup and clean them up a bit.) $20.00 each to reinstall. I said no thank you espically after Chris' story.

So I made a spring compressor kind of like the one made by Taconut only not as heavy duty.
Used it on 6 take apart and put togethers so far. Sorry posting pics are not in my limited skills yet.

I am compiling some info on the different stock springs I have picked up and taken off the trucks so far.
When I pull mine off I will post the info. Kind of interesting so far.
Thanks again for the great sticky.

 

I'm planning on removing my revtek spacer and replacing with 5100's. I read that I need a coil spring isolator (insulator) is this necessary? Set shocks to 2.5 or get OME 885's? Please help.

 

I just took my spacer lift off and put on 5100's, set at 2.5 and installed UCA's from lightracing it looks like I dropped a little, but the ride is alot smoother how do I get it back up? What is this insulator thing you speak of?

 

That is just a tool. A spring compressor.

 

If you want more lift look at getting some spindles.