Suspension recommendation for occasional heavy-ish load

Hi y'all, my wife is a travel nurse, so we move every three months or so. I run a cap on my access cab truck, and we fill her pretty much to the gills, nothing explicitly heavy, just house stuff. I am planning on getting an exact weight measurement during our upcoming move, but I have no clue how much I am loading in the ole girl.

Anyway, I am thinking about upgrading my suspension since we are planning on continuing this lifestyle for several years. I don't feel like I need a lift (or maybe an inch?) as I don't do any offroading that she can't handle with a stock suspension, additionally don't want to mess with the stock geometry, gas mileage etc.

I see differing advice all over for sumo springs vs AAL vs new leaf pack. Wondering if someone else has a similar situation.

Any advice?

 

Considering you don't want any lift, don't want to change stock feel/geometry, and the need for additional load bearing is only on rare occasion, you may also consider looking into air bags.

 

Considering the desire to remain essentially stock/no lift and the occasional widely varying weight on the truck, I think air bags are definitely the way to go.

 

Are air bags much better than sumo springs? Seems like they do about the same thing

 

Air bags would be a great way to go. I use the Super Bumps
and they have been great. I do have a lift though but they are a progressive.

 

If you're not squatting when loaded you're fine as is. Modifying the suspension will help improve the experience if you're near max payload and even a little overloaded. But upgrading the suspension doesn't mean you can haul more weight safely.

Most Tacoma's have 1000-1300 lbs of payload, you just have to check the sticker on your drivers door jamb. Each truck is different. Your cap is 180-200 lbs of that. You have to figure in your weight as well as your wife. In reality you only have a few hundred pounds to work with after accounting for the cap, driver and passenger.

Tacoma's have ridiculously low payload numbers. Even Honda Ridgeline beats Tacoma by a wide margin. But they do have decent tow ratings. If you need to move much weight a trailer is the best bet. An empty trailer is about 1000 lbs and you can put another 3000 lbs in it and tow it with ease.

Most Tacoma's are rated for 6500 lbs, but don't believe it. The reasons why would take up a whole thread but let's just say that around 4000-4500 lbs is a sensible weight to tow with a Tacoma. And that's more than you could put in the bed of a 1 ton pickup.

 

Air bags for me on a 23' Offroad Tacoma created a harsh ride unloaded on the lowest setting. I pulled them off and went with the Road Active Suspension. Fantastic system. Comfortable ride unloaded and very little sag loaded. Watch the vids, read the reviews, nothing negative to be said about it, even off road it works great.

 

I put on the blue Sumo Springs and added a Road Active Suspension kit. Unloaded ride is the same heavy loads not much sag at all.

 

As others have said: Air bags. If you want to keep your ride quality as close to stock as possible, but occasionally haul much more, or a varied amount, they offer the best adjustability. I'm a huge fan of a full leaf pack if hauling heavy over 50% of the time, but if you aren't, airbags are a better choice.

 

To be honest, I don't have experience with either; but from my understanding, sumo springs are essentially an airbag with no adjustability. Seems like its a good solution for those who are constantly carrying a load, but because its always essentially a max inflated airbag, your unloaded drive could be negatively affected by the stiffness of it. Thats kinda the reason I mentioned airbags. You can adjust the pressure in them to account for the extra weight if needed, and can deflate when not carrying a load.

 

In all such threads my thought is that why would one feel the need to modify a pickup to carry out one of the primary tasks it was designed to do? A Tacoma is not a Camry.

Upgrading the suspension to occasionally carry a load within the GVWR is IMHO (semi) equivalent to upgrading from a 2 bedroom house to a 3 bedroom house because you are having a child.

Also note that increasing spring rate and/or damping will affect your unloaded ride quality adversely. With both spring rate and damping there is a sweet spot between too little and too much. Adding more isn't always a good thing.

 

If it isn't squatting, I would wear the suspension out until required. It is a truck suspension after all, like @gudujarlson mentioned.

But lifting the front 1" with Bilstein 5100's would give you much nicer ride, being a bigger better shock than the stock SR's, and would eliminate oem brake dive, which is a real nice improvement. Best part is, it won't mess with your geometry.

Good luck Warf.

 

Because Toyota built the Tacoma for the average user, who might NEVER tow anything or haul anything heavier than a fridge, even though the max payload is higher. If they designed the truck for it to be used regularly at max payload, it'd ride much stiffer and the average user would hate it.

Long before I started modding my truck, all I did was haul around a 350 pound quad. The ride was horrible with that load, which led me to find out about a TSB to get different leaf springs. Those were a big improvement for regularly hauling around something that should have been EASY for the truck, but obviously the truck was designed more for comfort and the extremely rare higher load where you'd just deal with the crappy ride the one time you filled the truck with 800 pounds of pavers/sand/whatever.

When I finally started pulling my trailer regularly, 2500 pounds under the truck's tow rating, balanced for proper tongue weight, and with next to nothing in the truck besides a couple helmets and riding gear, the TSB leaf springs were pointing me at the sky and were shot. Even unloaded you could see they were worn out, and I had never come close to payload limits or trailering limits back then.

So yeah, I understand why Toyota designed it for the 90% of people using 20% of the truck's capability. But if the user wants to use the truck regularly at 50-100% of capability, it's going to need some reasonable modifications for it to handle it nicely, but that will degrade unloaded ride. It's all a trade off.

 

I think you are talking about a different situation. What I was referring to are threads where it appears that the OP is putting a modest payload into their truck for the first time and is concerned their stock suspension is not up to the task. It's not always clear, in this case as well, what the exact context is, because the OP rarely provides numbers or other important details, but responders still tend to assume the worst case scenario and happily encourage the OP to spend their money on stuff that might not improve the OP's situation.

 

Timbrens or Sumo.
Retain the gentleman's ride when not needed.
And use the Timbrens or Sumos when needed.