Fitting 285s

Hell I could barely turn anyway without the mudlaps. Mine were rubbing pretty bad on the plastic fender lining. Thankfully my drive home was 98% straightline.

 

This.

I got the same size tires and I like to wheel when I can. The thing you got to ask yourself is are you willing to go "off road" and possibly rub on the trail? This can make for a very slow drive home if this happens to you. Im LT, so I had no choice as the articulation with LT is more exaggerated over stock geo. Furthermore I tend to wheel with speed, and I don't want to be that guy who blows up a wheel on the trail.

Remember, the stock geo is simply that with factory clearances in the wheel well. Your wheel can only travel in one vertical directional path when going through the stroke of the suspension. A lift only means that it will take more cycling of your suspension for the tire to make that contact point happen. Im sure it sounds weird to have to trim something on this truck, but its the name of the game for 285s. Just too damn wide of a tire.

You could get away with some crazy offset wheels, but do you really want to chance that if you wheel?

 

We got a guy in our group who has 255s and he has to drive extra cautious as at full cycling he can still rub. You could be like that if you want, just takes away the fun from wheeling to me to have that in the back of your mind all the time.

 

No one mentioned spc control arms. You can set them all the way forward and max the lcas tuning camber with the spc uca. This can net almost 2" clearance at the wheel well. But you may rub a bit up front.

 

Im not familiar with those arms personally although I know buddies who run them. Would setting them to clear possibly forego the best alignment conditions for your truck?

 

OK....Here's what I have; 885X coils with 1/2" top spacer. Billstien 5100 (@ 0") Net 2-7/8" front lift after settling. 46,000 miles since installed. Deavers 2" AAL on stock leaf pack. 123,000 miles on that set of leaves. Still @ 2" above stock ride height from new. No sag. Headstrong Ubolt flip. Wheelers Superbumps. Stock UCA's ( 0-0-2.4 alignment specs) 1" Bora spacers with stock TRD OR wheels. 285/75r16 Cooper Discoverer STT Pro's. Cab mount is cut (maybe slightly more than "average". Mud flaps are where they need to be....in a trash can. Some of the fender flair is cut on front. Some metal at very bottom of fender opening cut. Pinch weld was cut off and seam welded then sealed. No cutting on rear, just no mud flap.

Truck gets wheeled a good bit. I haul loads nearing 1500 to 2000 lbs on occasion. It does NOT get babied. Just not abused.

I have had it stuffed to full flex...all the way bottomed against stops, full lock to lock turn. Cannot make it rub. (I tried...I really did) I may have stumbled upon the ideal set up mostly because of wheel set up. Long story short, quite a bit of cutting in front, but nothing too radical. Again, my cab mount is cut more than typical...May even clear 35's. (Will clear 34's...Tried that too)

I also acknowledge the fact that I got better alignment numbers with stock UCA's than anyone I know of. Alignment has been checked by 3 different techs with same results. It drives great. No wandering. Steering wheel returns to center as it should. No vibration. If I had ANY issues, I'd keep changing things until it was OK. No plans to change anything.

YMMV.

 

You will loose a bit of caster. 1.5-2.0* max but still within toyota spec and drives fine. At 4* I could not tell a difference.

I'm a master at tuning these arms. I have tried every setting on my 4runner fully cycling front suspension on all settings. 3 alignment in one month.

My 33s at full stuff I could not turn. Tire locked into wheel well. Would rub in reverse on street when coming out driveway.

Now my tires have 1" clearance at full stuff with tire turned. All my cutting and pounding of pinch weld was not needed.

On a tacoma you will clear pinch weld, maybe cab mount but do have chance to rub up front on stock bumper.

 

Good to know.... what offset wheels and dimensions were you running? 16 by what?

 

I didn't say more caster. I said max the spc arm forward. This will actually net -4* caster. Then max the lcas forward completely. Now loosen spc uca ball joint and eyeball camber You will gain 2" clearance at the rear of tire to firewall and mount. Then alignment shop fine tunes camber with lca. If you eyeball camber close they wont change much except toe.

 

Is this more like a horizontal spacer adjustment sort of thing with the SPC arms? I would of thought they had a fixed location on the UCA mount, but again I don't know shit about these arms.

 

Don't know specs on them off hand. But, they're stock Toyota TRD Off Road wheels on a 1" spacer.

 

You may still hit the cab mount during full stuff yes but should clear pinch weld for street driving. Doing what I'm saying gives you maximum firewall clearance meaning less cutting and hacking. Maybe me saying 2" clearance was overboard. Gave my 4runner so much clearance i can clear 35s on the street with no rub or firewall modification.

My brothers 4th gen gained major clearance. He still needs a cab mount chop but he can daily drive and off-road without much rubbing.

Non adjustable aftermarket UCAS like icons ect.. make the rub worse because it adds caster but pushes that tire back into wheel well. That's why shaved stock UCAS IMO are better than tubulars.

 

They are fully adjustable. I believe 8 different settings on the upper ball joint. 4* +/- caster adjustment and full camber adjustment.

Each ball joint setting changes angle of the coil. When changing the settings forward you get tons of firewall clearance.

Most clearance comes from lca settings. You can't max the lcas bolts because camber will be way off. The beauty of the SPCs you can tune the camber up top allowing you to run maxed lca bolts.

Months of tuning and multiple alignments i finally figured them out. Off-road shops kept adjusting them the wrong way because logic tells you more caster means more clearance.

 

Def interesting man, seems to be beneficial for the stock guys out there. Unfortunately with my LCAs, I had to grenade my cab mounts.

 

Camburges are 2* additional caster. They do this by the design of ball joint angled back 2*

I run SPCs at negative 4* caster. Pretty much stock uca location. This angles coil forward giving a bit more clearance.

Now you completely max lca cam bolts. This moves tire forward drastically but camber is way off. No way it could be aligned on stock or tubular arms because no camber adjustment.

Now you tune camber with SPCs and don't touch the cam bolts on lower. Resulting in maximum firewall clearance.

Quote from SPC
"Alternately, if caster is set for
max positive by the OEM lower cams, and final alignment
achieved with via the SPC upper balljoint setting, more tire
clearance may be obtained at the rear of the wheel opening."

 

Sounds pretty techy from my point, but I don't deal with alignments and stuff at all. Is this easily achievable without your extensive background in alignments and stuff? I could see the average joe having some trouble with this set up, but its cool that there are possibilities.

 

That is true. But it's just suspension geometry. It 100% works. It's impossible for it not to work.

If peeps want least amount of cutting and chopping spc arms are the way to go.

Guess I'll have to prove it on my wife's rig once we start building it.

 

Just curious whether or not I would recommend this avenue for some of the guys by me as they are all considering doing the CMC to theirs with 285s. Some have SPC, but I don't think any are that inclined with adjusting UCAs.

 

It was a pita. Every alignment shop thinks they know what to do. They want to charge additional hour labor to adjust the uppers. Two off-road alignment shops wanted to set the SPCs all the way back for additional 4* caster. I rubbed coming off the alignment. They think ohh machine says 5.5* positive caster. It shouldn't rub. But eye test showed no clearance. It took me a call to spc and fine tuning each setting. Me maxing lcas. Me eyeballing camber. Once you figure out out it's pretty easy. Goal is give aligmnen t shop less to mess up since I pre aligned it.