Cheap leveling solution

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Inch-Fro...152765583242?fits=Year:2013|Model:Tacoma#rwid

Looking for a cheap option to level out my truck and looking into spacers. Pretty set on going this route based off of money. How does this option look and should I do a 2 or 3 inch? everything is stock on 33's and when I measure it out there is a 3" difference. Want it as level as possible but not sure if going for the 3 will cause any problems in the future

 

Well it certainly is cheap. 3" will more than level you out, you'll sit a high in the front.

Give your truck some respect and don't be this cheap.

 

3 inch you’ll probably need new UCAs to get your alignment in spec.. which can be from 300ish for the the cheap ones to over 500 for some of the name brand ones.. I ran a 2 inch spacer for around 75k miles or so and they trashed my shocks.

 

Being an old phart, I've come to realize that what starts out cheap, rarely ends that way.
Save up some $$ then buy once, cry once. You don't wanna do this 2-3 times, adding or removing things to get what you're looking for.

Just my $.02...

 

Spacers work awesome when properly done. A 3" lift of any kind on the front of a Tacoma will require aftermarket UCA's to get the caster up to snuff. General consensus is 2" is max without getting aftermarket UCA's. 3" is too much if you're trying to level it, 2" is much closer to level. Personally I'd get aftermarket UCA's even with a 2".

Probably the most overlooked aspect of a spacer lift is the bump stops. If the bump stops aren't corrected the strut's travel limitations become the bump stop and the strut will fail sooner or later and that won't be fun at all (catastrophic).

Mine has 3" (spacer) in the front, 1.25" block in the back, and it has a 0.5* positive rake (back is slightly higher than the front). On pavement it rides fantastic and offroad it rides like dog poo. I also removed the swaybar. Struts, shocks, and springs are stock. JBA HC UCA's as well.

I should start a GoFundMe so other people can buy me a lift for my truck that suits their wallet and their tastes.. It's ridiculous that money spent seems to translate into how nice a vehicle is. Mall crawlers with $10K in suspension lmao.

I guarantee that most of the people that complain about spacer lifts either didn't do it properly or have never done it and I'm positive about that.

100's of threads of dissatisfied people with bilsteins and 1,000's of comments recommending bilsteins. Lol.

 

^^^This.. I learned the hard way

 

Good suspension will run you about $1000-2000. This cost is less than the gas you pay for a year.

Spacer setups have their place, which is always on pavement. There's a reason your setup feels like dog poo and it's because it is not optimized for off roading, which is fine.

How I see it is that I would not want to make my truck less capable by limiting my up travel with a spacer lift as the travel we already have is very small with IFS (8").

Now you may laugh at the mall crawlers but their capability is astronomically beyond yours.

Just like how you are contemplating on someone to purchase your upgrades, I would say that you couldn't pay me twice over to install your suspension setup.

That being said, I run a 3" block in the rear with super bumps spaced out to the correct level. As you have said, done correctly it can handle well but your range of "well" is limited by your hardware and how much you want or don't want to spend.

A vehicles well being relies on funneling your money through it, so of course how nice a vehicle may be translated is directly correlated to how much you spend. Albeit some people spend that money in way more ridiculous ways than necessary.

 

im working up ambition to address my front spacer issue today. ugh.

 

Everything that you wrote that is based on facts is in fact factual in my opinion. Everything that you wrote that was your opinion is exactly that and you definitely have a right to your opinion.

Personally I don't believe dollars spent equals quality of build at all. Some people do their own labor and some people don't. Some people buy off the shelf parts and some people fabricate their own parts.

According to your opinion, which you have a right to have and express, the person that builds their own parts and installs them has a build that isn't up to your par of work. In the beginning of every new part that's available to the public someone built it from scratch and therefore every part that's sitting on a shelf shouldn't be up to your standards according to your own opinion - unless it's the shelf and the actual act of handing over money for labor that dictates the quality of the build in your opinion which is fine. Im just writing reality.

Limiting up travel does have benefits btw. Benefits like less fender/fenderwell/cab mount cutting. Almost everything has its advantages and drawbacks.

 

I agree that dollars spent does not equal quality of work. I do believe that dollars spent on a high end item with substantial R&D and stringent testing methods and qualifications is worth more than a cheap mass production item. On the other end of the spectrum, many companies produce parts that you weld yourself and even that is worth more than overpriced one off pieces.

I do buy parts and alot of them are not up to my standard for sure. I am by trade an engineer and end up redesigning alot of parts and fabricating.

I like your thinking for sure and it's made me put some thought into what you said but it doesn't justify cheaping out on your truck and spending as little as possible. It also doesn't constitute a revolutionary industry change where everyone will do spacer lifts vs full suspension. Eventually you will do it I'm sure.

For what I use my truck for, I am constantly off road for work and on the weekends im on the beach fishing, on the deer lease hunting or finding myself backpacking and camping far away from society.

Let's agree to disagree. My setup works for me and yours for you. I am dang sure my setup would work better for you than yours would work for me though. You would have alot more fun in my truck anyways haha.

I hope you have a great day, it's always nice to exchange thoughts on the forums and never hurts to express ones opinion!

 

I am removing the spacer lift on our truck and installing an Eibach stage 1 lift with 3 leaf AAL's in the back.
Total cost under $800.
The spacer lift I have is done correctly but it doesn't ride well on road and off road is worse. It came on the truck when I bought it. I will be doing a full comparison between the 2 and how it rides as soon as I can get it installed.
Just waiting on Eibach to ship.

 

You could pick up some new take-off struts from a 3rd gen (some people give those away), then buy a pair of 2" front coils to put on those "new" struts and have a level ride, with a better feel up front. That's one way to do it without using spacers on your old struts.

 

How did they trash your shocks?

 

I didnt do anything with the bump stops.. so my shocks became the bump stops as dg92071 explained .. they started leaking, then the truck started riding like crap. Really bouncy over bumps.. and an ocasional clunk.. swapped out to bilstein 5100s with ome 887s. Rides much better and no more clunk sound when going over speed bumps.

 

Idk how to do emoji's but I'm drooling over here, 24" of up travel and 24" of down travel, whole Lee crap...

Metal Cloak 6 pak shocks look crazy cool.