2014 Tacoma lift kits, wheels, tires

Hi Everyone,

Im new to this Tacoma World. i just bought a 2014 Tacoma double cab short bed 4x4 and i want to get a 3" lift kit and bigger wheels and tires. I want to know what 3" lift kits are there that are really good and are under $1000. i want the kit to be for both front and rear. Also i was thinking about getting Pro Comp 7031 wheels but i dont know what size tires will fit on it. i want to go as big as the 3" lift will allow.

please advise.

thanks

 

You're not going to do a 3" lift for under $1k unless your willing to drop the additional cost of UCA's. The truck simply won't align with acceptable caster with 3" on stock UCA's. You also may have to deal with driveline vibrations and the front diff needle bearing.

This kit with 887's assembled on 5100's, Dakar's, rear 5100's and LR UCA's will run you $1600. http://www.headstrongoffroad.com/store/p312/Coil/Bilstein_5100_Kit_w/_Dakars_(HS05BK-1-Dakar).html

That said if you just want the truck to be raised a bit and look good with 265's the Toytec 1.6" kit is really nice. http://toyteclifts.3dcartstores.com/BK0510--Bilstein-Adjustable-lift-kit-with-5100-shocks_p_132.html

I'm very happy with mine and my alignment is pretty close(2.0*/2.2* caster). Drives nice on the freeway and soaks up the bumps nicely. I have 265/70R17(comparible to 265/75R16) and the stance is nice with that size tire and my speedometer is almost dead on compared to being fast stock. I have no vibrations to speak of. I initially thought I had the infamous Tacoma needle bearing vibe(front diff) but I'm guessing it was the shitty road I did my first test drive on. My truck is sitting maybe .5" higher in the rear with the single 1.5" AAL installed. The canopy definitely loads the rear up some so the single AAL rides nice. I'm anticipating a full leaf spring replacement in a couple years.


The only recent pic I have of it. The rake would be closer to stock without the canopy.

Also if you want to improve the ride immensely for cheap it's hard to beat Wheeler's Superbumps in the front. I've had mine on for at least a couple thousand mile snow and they are awesome. Speed bumps that used to kidney busters were easy to glide over with the stock suspension.

 

Thanks for posting this. 3" is much to high IMO, but that 1.6" looks perfect!

 

i really want a 3" lift. if its more than $1000 then so be it. what kits should i be looking at. there are a lot out there

 

I have a 2.75" lift on the front of my 2014 access cab with 265/60/18 wheels. As soon as I got my lift, I headed straight to NTB to get an alignment and the result was a caster measurement of 4.5 on the left and 2.8 on the right, with the right side being out of spec. I'm assuming my steering will pull to the right??? I'm not exactly sure what it means and how severe the problem is based on the numbers. Can someone explain it? Thanks.

 

If I were doing 3" I would use the setup I linked to above from Headstrong Off-road. OME 887 springs, OME Dakars, Bilstein 5100's, and light racing upper control arms.

 

Icon. Buy once. No regrets.

 

what is the difference between stage 1 and 2

 

Remote resevoir rear shocks. I went with stage 1 plus the progressive addaleaf. It rides wonderful!

 

Welcome to TacomaWorld! Per our discussion, here are the details of my lift. This will be way north of the $1k budget you have though. I haven't measured the lift yet either, but I think it's around 3".

Suspension:
Icon Stage 2 (minus the AALs), Built Right Fab UCAs, 1/4 thick poly strut top place spacer, OME Dakars, Wheeler's bushing set for OME Dakars, All-Pro U-Bolt Flip Kit, Wheeler's Superbump Bumpstop for All-Pro Kit
Wheels:
TRD Wheels (stock on TX Pro), Trail-Gear 1.25" wheel spacers
Tires:
BFG All-Terrain KO2s 265/75 R16

 

Sub'd as I'm also pondering a lift and which way to go. I have the same truck (TRD OR DCSB) and I'm eyeing up the Icon Stage 2 kit. Seems to be running around $2k but doesn't include UCAs? I'm under the impression that the Icon Stage 2 lift will require an UCA for alignment.

 

Advantage of adjustable coilovers, like the Icons. Don't lift over 3" and you won't NEED UCAs. Mine aligned well with that kit. If I want to crank it up in the future,I will get new A arms most likely.

 

I will save the "this question has been asked a million times blah blah blah" rant.

Your $1k ish budget for suspension could do the following:

ARB Old Man EMU full kit. I had it, wasn't the biggest fan. Gripes: All of the shocks rusted to shit in like 3 months. Installed in October by December damn thing looked like I drove it into the ocean. I do live in the north east so lots of salt on the roads in the winter. ride was so-so firm but not bad for a truck. Shocks lasted about 40k miles. All four totally blew out the valving.

Bilstein 5100 shocks. Lot of peoples go to for cheap and good quality shocks. Will need to reuse your stock front coils, or buy replacements. Many many threads and review on them.

Bilstein 6112 and 5160. Comes with new front coils. All 4 are bigger and beefier compared to the 5100s. Few threads on them.

Coilovers are a whole big bag of worms you may or may not want to get into. These are going to set you back $1k+ just for the fronts. They are fully adjustable, customizable, and rebuildable. They are great to properly level your truck in terms of getting rid of any lean one side to the other, and also give it 100% the stance you want. ICON, Fox, King are the big ones. There are others. Fox will corrode to shit if you live anywhere that puts salt on the road in the winter. ICON has aluminum components and can put on a special coating to prevent it.

There is threads upon threads discussing Digressive and Progressive valving. ICON and Bilstein is Digressive. Basically Digressive is stock characteristics. Shock is stiff on the initial hit or bump and then will start to loosen or become softer the more you cycle the shock.
Progressive is the opposite. Soft initial hit, becomes stiffer over time.
Progressive will have more body roll in the corners. Digressive won't. From there arguments get a little blurred and comes down to what Kool Aide you like more.

UCA or upper control arms help when you lift the truck more than 2.5 inches to get you back into alignment spec and also fully utilize the suspension travel.

Good thing to know is the higher you lift the truck the less down travel you are going to end up with. This is due to maxing out the Lower Control arm and CV axle. Need to play that middle ground between lift and travel. Going over a pot hole or speed bump you will notice the shock max out for down travel, lots of clunking, noise, bad ride, and breakage will ensue.

If you want better or more recomendations talk to Wheelers Offroad, Headstrong Offroad, Toytech, Low Range are good suspension places to talk to and All Pro does have suspension kits and components along with armor.

Wheels. Anything with 4.5 inch backspacing.

Tires. 265/75R16 or 265/70R17 will fit stock (minor rubbing here and there). And will fit with a lift basically 99.9999%. (Some people are a special bread and find a way that it rubs).
33s or 285/75R16 or 285/70R17 will fit on a 2.5 inch lift. Rubbing will ensue on mud flaps, plastic bits, and probably the body mount. Trimming, cutting, and massaging will be needed. Any size above that will require more.


255/85R16 and 255/80R17 will require less to no trimming when compared to the 285s while still being a 33 inch tire. Comes down if you like the wide tires or thin.

Another decent size is 255/75R17. Prices jump significantly from 265s to the 285s just forewarning. Brace for easily another $1k in wheels and tires.

EDIT: Depending how high you go there are a few small items you might need to. Longer front and rear brake lines to avoid stretching and damaging the lines, rear drive shaft center support bearing spacers to help with drive line angles, axle shims to help drive line angles, new bump stops front and rear to prevent over compressing the shocks or coilovers, possible limit straps in the front to prevent maxing out shocks or coilovers, front driver side needle bearing eliminating bushing for ECGS to fix front vibrations.

 

Is there a way to run 18's without issues and if so what would be the tire size? I am trying to get more of a low profile aggressive look on the tire more then a big sidewall look. Any help would be appreciated cause I am defiantly a newbe and your post gave me the most amount of info so far.....

 

I want to say 265/65R18 is biggest size for an 18 inch rim no lift. That equates to the same size as 265/75R16 and 265/70R17. Now the back spacing of the rim will play a factor. I would say 4.5inch back space would be perfect or less (less back spacing is actually a bigger number so 4.75 is actually less back space) the bigger the number the closer in the wheel will sit into the fender. The lower the number the farther out it sits.
A lot of times rims are sold by offset so you can use https://www.customwheeloffset.com/tire-wheel-backspacing-offset-calculators to figure out which setup to go with.
Hope this helps man, ppl give a lot of shit for not searching stuff but threads get so filled with other BS can be tough to find