advice needed

doing my first lift but not to experienced with vehicles. Im a helicopter mechanic wanted to finally started a hobby with vehicles. have a 2015 Tacoma TRD Pro looking to lift it. Im eyeing the 6" BDS lift with the Fox coil overs 35" tires and 18" rims. my questions are going that big do i have to re-gear the truck or can i get a tune to support the transmission and gears from burning up? if I'm coming off stupid please help me out just needing a little help for a starter.

 

Check out the 2nd Gen Forum, you'll find a lot of info about lifts. I think the consensus is to avoid the lifts that involve cutting out the subframe, which is pretty much all 6" lifts, if not all of them.

That is, of course, unless you're not going to do any serious wheeling.

The most popular lift seems to be the Old Man Emu (OME), which will lift the truck just under 3". You'll be able to run 33"s, with some work in the front fender wells. You'll also need to get a set of front upper control arms.

If you're looking for higher performance for fast runs on rough roads, you'll want to look at some coil-overs from Icon, King, or Fox. Pair their shocks with springs from OME, Deaver, or another company.

 

Im pretty sold on the 6" i know a little bit about building just the little I've learned on my own working with friends I'm more looking to see if ill have to put new gears in or not. I plan on doing some off roading not looking to extreme rock crawl or anything like that its still my daily driver but I've been told running 35s will put a lot of strain on the transmission and ill lose a good bit of power. A buddy mentioned i may be able to get a tuner to get around having to replace the gears so if theres anything you know about that it would help me out get a better picture.

 

I haven't heard of any tuners for the transmission. I think you'll want to regear the truck. I'm running 32" e rated BFG, and I'm dying to regear. My truck unlocks the converter and drops to 4th all the time. I'm at 4000ft and the area is pretty mountainous around Salt Lake, so that doesn't help.

Do you have the tow package? The auxiliary cooler helps a lot, these are good transmissions, but nothing likes to be cooked.

 

35s will put strain on the drivetrain and you will loss a lot of performance from your motor. Since you will not be doing much rock crawling ground clearance from the large tires is not required. I would run a 33/10.5/15 tire max. For that tall Austrailian Outback look or even a 32/11.5/15 or even comparable metric size tires but pay close attention to how wide your tires are. Wide tires are go for stability and floatations in sand but are a much heavier tire for your motor to turn. Taller/narrower tires are great for added ground clearance but down offer as much contact patch to the ground for rock crawling. Concentrate on armor such a belly pan for the bottom of vehicle, rock sliders for sure and nice front and rear bumpers( tube bumper or ARB style very cool). You can run 35s but would recomm no upgrading axle shafts and regearing of diff.