01 tacoma shock install help

Hello everyone. I am a new member but have lurked for a while now. I have found some great info from previous threads but I have a few questions.

I am changing my stock shock to a set of Bilstein 5100's front and back. The back are pretty straight forward but the fronts are a different story.

The truck has a lift of around 2". Block under the leaf springs and the fronts have the spacer on the top part of the shock. I am not real familiar with this so I need some help. When I put the ne fronts on do I use the spacers that are on the truck now or do I adjust the 5100's to 2" height adjustment and put them on that way?

If someone has a step by step process of changing the fronts I would be grateful. Any pics are welcome also. Thanks for any help you can give.

 

Its pretty straight forward. Remove top 3 strut bolts only. Dont touch the center bolt untill its on a string compressor. Remove the bottom bolt and pull it out. Rears are just top and bottom. The shock can go either way up or down it doesnt really matter as much since it comes with the boot (i put mine boot down). As for the lift it would be better to run the bilsteins on the top setting (~2.5in) instead of the spacer. Most on here will agree that the bilsteins are much more superior to the spacer. If you didnt buy the bushings for the strut just go ahead and reuse the old ones but make sure its all in the right order. Thats about it for replacing the shocks.

 

Thanks for the reply.

So basically I just put the coil on the new shocks ( set at 2") and install?

Also, I rented a coilspring compressor. So I can remove the top three bolts and the bottom bolt and then remove the whole assembly and then compress the coils once removed?

 

Its roughly 2-2.5in of lift. And yes it comes out as a whole, compress unscrew and reinstall with the new shocks. It took me about 2 hours with me and my brother in the school shop so plan for a long day if your planning on doing this at home.

 

So can anyone tell me where I need to set the shocks at to maintain the ride heigth I have now?

I don't think that my tacoma has a spacer kit. It has a hat that is about 1" thick that goes into the mounting bracket and below the mounting bplate is a piece that is about 1/2" thick but I assume this is just for the spring to seat into.

I am assuming that I should set the shocks at stock because of the spacer. Is this correct?

Thanks again, ea

 

Post a pic or two of what you have. If you want to keep the spacers leave the shocks at the bottom or 0 position.