Mid Travel BS 2.0

I found my own answer, 65" on 2nd gen .. so 69 with +2

 

I think I have the same issue as you. Model is FOX 883-25-025 (0-3", IFP, no reservoir) and coils are marked FOX 039-26-004-A (which the Google says is 600#, 13"). I got about 2" of lift from them. The distance from the spring seat to the top is about 2" set by FOX and I added 0.25" on the driver's side trying to level it.

Did the longer/higher rate springs solve it? I can't say about the ride yet, it's going in for an alignment tomorrow so I've only driven it around the neighborhood to check function. It seemed stiff but that's subjective since I had worn out original TRD suspension, although only 60K on it.

 

Subbin

 

You don't have a problem at all, all aftermarket CO's are going to ride stiffer than stock that is completely normal...but unlike stock when you do go off road the truck will not handle like a clapped out 72 El Dorado. The entire stock set up is geared around road comfort and soaking up vibrations from the super soft coils to the super soft bushings and the super soft car tires that come stock. If your CO's are that new it has not even settled in / broken in yet either. Over the next couple of weeks your springs will settle a bit and you will have to adjust them a bit more and that is all normal. The amount of exposed thread on your CO means nothing and adding a 1/4" of pre load is nothing.

 

Didn't mean to sound like I didn't like the suspension feel, in fact I've always though Toyota puts suspension on their trucks that's way too soft. My previous truck was running 25mm torsions, OME heavy rears packs, heavy shocks on all 4 corners. I prefer a truck that rides like a truck on the road and like it should off. The stock suspension on my truck, which was even TRD, sucked off highway. It was all over the place on washboard, just awful.

My concern is continuing to crank the coils up to get another 1/2" seems like it's going to put the spring seat pretty far down the body of the shock. I've contacted my vendor to see if that's OK before going more. I suspect I'll need at least longer coils, if not higher rated. I'm still running stock bumper, one battery, etc. The next mod is to put two Odysseys in the stock location and that's going to bump that corner up another 30-ish pounds.

 

There is nothing wrong with the position of the collar, it means nothing at all. You do not need longer coils. Do not put two batteries in the stock location it will destroy your core wall and body bushings.

 

@IGGY has a kit, or is almost done making his kit that fits a battery over in the passenger side by the firewall

 

Is this experience based from baja speed style wheeling or did you see this same issue with slow overlanding style wheeling?

 

Removed my washer bottle since the wife rubbed through in pismo. So much more room for activities!




also can see my new invisi-coat on my coilovers.

 

Where'd you buy it? I've been looking into getting some

 

That would be a good spot but I have the ABS controller on the passenger fender. I don't have the VSC/TRAC skid controller master cylinder, so it's a vacuum booster M/C and old style ABS.

I know that it's a risk to add weight there but I'm beefing things up to distribute the weight (1/4" aluminum plate battery tray, support under the fender mount) and already replaced the stock rubber bushings with much stiffer and larger poly (I've got

$28 Energy Suspension 9.4101G UNIVERSAL MOUNT

Energy Suspension 9.4101G) bushings. Adding this weight there significantly adds capacity. The Truestart 27F I have now is 710 CCA, a pair of PC1400 will be 1700 CCA. So 38% more weight (28 extra lbs) and 44% more area (38.5 more square inches) gets 140% more stored energy.

I could literally run the main battery completely flat winching and have no trouble starting the truck even on the coldest snow runs. This is actually heading off a potential problem I had. Getting to an abandoned ski area I got my old truck into a place that required two long pulls to get out when we skied back out after a couple of days touring in the backcountry. Yeah, it did not suck having a whole old ski area to yourself with a couple of feet of new snow. But if I had killed the engine there's not a small chance I would have been SOL.

For what I do with my truck I'm making a conscious decision to maximize the under hood space. I don't do high speed desert running pretty much ever. I do a lot of washboard though, so I'm aware of the chance this will deform the fender. OTOH, I definitely do a whole lot of winter sports where my truck deals with snow and cold, so I want more electrical capacity. Even just starting the engine after it's been sitting at subzero under a blanket of snow for a few days it will be nice to have the extra juice.

 

Yes.

 

It really doesn't matter, dual batteries in the stock location is just to much and the aluminum foil front body will crumple over time

 

That is probably true that over time dual batteries will fatigue the fender faster than the stock battery will. It's not a good location even in stock form either.

However a little bar stock and a few of fasteners goes a long way to distributing the stress on the core support and fender apron.



I haven't solved it yet, perhaps using salvage VW or GM truck tray supports or something. There needs to be some flex so a hard brace obviously won't work.

Ultimately the question here isn't about dual battery in stock location viability. For the sake of the discussion can't it be just accepted that some people might want to have their suspension deal with weight there?

 

It just makes so much more sense to relocate the batteries back to the bed, under the bed, under the cab or even behind the back seats. From weight distribution to all of the core wall and inner fender fatigue issues it just doesn't make sense to put them in that location. Trails and crawling flex your truck far more and put just as much stress as high speed stuff does...hell higher speed dirt road running is a heck of a lot smoother ride than bashing around crawling in ruts and over rocks. It's only a couple hundred bucks in wore to relo the dual batteries but the weight distribution benefits are " priceless "

 

I concede your points but can't we just accept that the problems we're solving and goals for our outfits are different? I have a group 27 marine battery in the bed for the household stuff, fridge, lights, radios, but I prefer to keep the winch and starting cables to the main & reserve batteries short and minimally exposed. This worked for 17 years on my last truck (which took 25 years for the fender to start buckling) and I'm confident that it's the way I want to go with this one, too. What actually was the bigger issue on my '91 was my camper shell (a WilderNest) forcing the bed rails to widen, buckling the walls and cracking the seams. So I'm going down this path with eyes wide open. I'm punting on the 'Nest until I can build a proper subframe under it since I know there's even less structure to the beds on the 2nd gen Tacoma. There's only so many cubic inches of space, I'm filling them fast. Eventually I'll build out the tray and replace the whole bed anyway, at which point I'll probably hang batteries under it in boxes in front of the rear wheels. Until then, this is the way I'm going.

 

Holy cow ...so you are doing 3 batteries total ?

 

BTW my truck is just full expo too, no jumping etc. You can easily build tube supports straight from the frame rail up through the OE battery tray area to provide " stilts " to place a battery tray on and that would put all the weight onto the frame vs. the body. Would be a quick easy fab job...

 

That's how my front battery is done, it hovers over the fender-well. Sits about in the same spot as stock but doesn't use the inner fender-well for support. Have one tube coming up off the frame rail, another off the shock hoop. Works for meow

 

That's the plan, at least in full travel mode. I haven't built the household battery into a permanent place yet because I'm still dithering on trying not to always fall back on the utility trailer.