Front suspension advice/input

Long time taco owner (purchased new in 2004) first time posting on the forum. Looking for some advice on my front suspension. First I guess I should give a little info on the truck. Bought the truck new in 2004. 4x4, xcab, trd package, v6, 5speed. Currently about 115,000 miles on it.

Immediately started looking to get it dirty and test the 4x4 as soon as it left the lot. This led to an eventual suspension upgrade to the first gen sway-a-way coilovers. I had a hook up for these shocks at the time so that seemed like an obviuous choice to fit bigger tires. Shortly after installing them the second gen 2.5 coilovers came out and I got a great deal on those. I think they went on with around 30k on the truck and haven’t been touched since. Never took them off to service or rebuild. The ride was always pretty stiff with this setup but I never seemed to mind until recently. I need to put new tires on and have been happy with the bfg at’s and plan on getting another set of the newer bfg ko2 in 265/75/16. The current tires are cupping very badly and I know I need to address the suspension or lack thereof before I spend money on new tires.
I’m looking at a few different options and wanted to get some feedback from people.
The truck doesn’t see as much dirt anymore and isn’t even my dd. I do take it up to the snow 6-7 times a year with the occasional camping/mild off roading trip. Looking to keep the 2” lift and tire size I’m currently running.
Option 1: upgrade to fox remote res coilovers, ditch the stock uca’s for Total Chaos or Camburg or similar uniball uca. Est cost is about $1700 shocks and $750 uca for an approx total $2450?
Option 2: pull off my sway-a-way setup and have them rebuild and possibly install softer springs to fix the rough/stiff ride they always had. This would mean pulling them and sending them out for rebuild. Approx cost of $6-800??? I’m guessing. Depends how bad they are.
Option 3: switch to an inexpensive original style strut setup with a spacer that mounts above the shock to give me the lift I need. Really don’t know what this would require. My original shocks got tossed years ago so I can’t re-use the springs or any other hardware. Not sure about cost. I’m guessing in the similar $6-800 range as option 2?
Option 4: am I missing another obvious solution that I’m not aware of?
Any help or input would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to get the softest on-road ride possible since that’s where the truck spends most of its time. I need to maintain the 2” of lift to clear the tires as well. Option 1 seems like the way to go if money wasn’t a question. Add 2500 to the 1000 I need to spend on tires and $3500 is a tough pill to swallow right now.
Thanks for any suggestions.

 

Appreciate the input. Rebuilding the shocks myself might be out of my skill set. If they originally came with any info on valving comp/reb it’s long gone by now. I can’t even find the spanner wrench that came with them. Again these were installed probably around 2006-7? Over 12 years ago and 85,000 miles. Are there any write ups or links to rebuilding? I’m lacking in any and all suspension related tools that I would assume are needed to perform the service.

 

9 months later I finally got around to pulling out my coilovers to have them rebuilt. Couple of questions. UCA’s? 120k miles and still original upper control arms and ball joints. In reading through the forum I understand these ball joints can be a weak link on our tacos and I should probably swap them out with new ones. OEM upper ball joints are $75 each from local Toyota dealer. Swap them in and call it a day? Never had any issues with alignment, running the coilovers at about 2” lift.
Shopping around there’s tons of replacement UCA options. Uniball from total chaos, camburg, icon... $7-800. Ball joint style from spc, jba for around $450. Is it true I’ll gain an extra inch of down travel by switching to aftermarket uca’s? If I need to replace the ball joints anyways for $150, spending an additional $300 for new uca’s to gain an inch of travel seems like a decent deal. I’ll also be gaining more castor adjustability.

 

@Turd4x4

The ball joint issue on our trucks is specific to the lower ball joint; replace with OEM.

Addressing your lower control arm bushings can also help your cupping/alignment issue.

 

$2450+ for front suspension is a LOT for something you only drive occasionally and for "mild offroading". UCAs are hardly necessary at your 2" lift, and the uniballs aren't even "necessary" unless you beat the snot out of it or have extra money laying around. Doesn't sound like you need resi shocks either unless, again, you have extra money laying around. Resi's don't necessarily perform any different than non-resis, they just don't fade as easily with heat buildup (i.e. mobbing in the desert Baja style). Driving around in the snow or "mild off-roading trip" you will NOT notice any performance gain from the resis.

Control arms don't wear out. Go to a dealer or a typical mechanic and he'll try and sell you a whole new control arm, but in reality unless it has been damaged, it's just your bushings, and mechanics are lazy and don't want to press out teh bushings, so they sell you a whole new LCA with bushings pre-installed.

Just get the Sway-a-ways rebuilt, and have them revalved to your liking. Unless you never got the proper weight spring to begin with, your coils should be fine. Might be asagged a little, but you can crank up the preload a little bit and that should be more than adequate.

Make sure you address those rear shocks, too. I assume they are matched sway-a-ways? If they are, make you you get those rebuilt too. They have seen just as many miles as the front, and if anything, because there isn't any weight back there, you tend to notice the "rough" ride from the rear shocks worse than the front.

Do the balljoints, and if you're into a little masochism, read my build thread (linked in my sig) I think around post 8 or something I have a little diatribe on balljoints for the OEM vs. non OEM debate. enjoy!

 

No.

Travel is limited by your shock, so no.

Only way to get more down travel is to do like I did and get extended travel Coilovers. Not sure if that's something you can have done with your sway-a-ways. Maybe?

I have total chaos UCAs. Did I "need" them? lol, no. At the ~1" lift I'm currently at I didn't need the diff drop either. But here we are... But with the mid travel Kings (again, build thread), I wanted the extra flexibility because of the extra down travel, but also for when I do go a little higher when I go to 33's.

My Kings have 1" more down travel.

 

@jbrandt thanks for the input. I’m taking the front coilovers in to have them serviced/rebuilt/revalved today. I believe they have a 600lbs spring which should be fine for my ride since I have no added weight. As for the uca’s I’ll just keep the stock ones on there for now. I noticed grease buildup, and leaks on the upper ball joints so I’ll order oem replacements for both upper and lower ball joints. I’ve gotten 120k out of them and hopefully I’ll get another 120 out of fresh oem ones.
As for the rear shocks I had the original trd bilsteins replaced about a year ago with new 4600 bilstein. The rear seems to be fine. The leaf springs are almost flat but this seems to be the case with our trucks.
$400 shock service and another approx $450 for ball joints seems like money well spent. Hopefully this will get my truck dialed in for the upcoming ski season. Appreciate all the advice on this forum.

 

So wait, you have a 2" lift in the front, and stock height out back?

When doing your balljoints, go rent the proper tool. I tried fussing around with a 3 arm puller and various other tricks, but it was an absolute nightmare. You can rent the tools for free at most auto parts stores. It's the one that looks like a big C-clamp.

 

@jbrandt Yes stock in back. When the truck rolled off the lot it was much higher in the back. The coilovers cranked 2” pretty much leveled it out. After ripping the cv’s I added the total chaos diff drop spacer and haven’t had any issues since then. I also haven’t been driving it nearly as hard as I did when it was new.
I have a buddy that said he has the tools to help with the ballpoint removal so that shouldn’t be an issue.