General Springs SD Before and After - With Update After 10,000 Miles

A lot of the discussion on General Springs seems to revolve around the Heavy Duty variety. I thought it might be worth posting a before and after of the Standard Duty springs.

Quick background: I bought this 1996 Tacoma V6 4wd back in June. It was miraculously rust-free and in pretty great condition overall, but the suspension was shot. I installed some new Bilstein 4600's on all four points, as well as Moog standard height coilovers (81100) up front after purchasing the truck. Unfortunately, I didn't have the cash on hand to purchase leaf springs at the same time. Fast forward through a summer of running the truck all over Montana, dealing with bone jarring rides on rough roads, a sad rear end sag, and severe axle wrap; it was finally time to pull the trigger on some new Falken At/3 tires and some General 3/1 SD Springs (90-171) before things start getting really snowy, muddy, and unpredictable out here.

I don't have any big toys to tow, and almost exclusively use the bed as a little mini RV for hunting and fishing excursions (I'll do a write-up on my quick breakdown sleeping platform design sometime soon). With this in mind, my local trusted mechanic advised me to not pay extra for the HD springs. I decided on the 3/1's because they were less expensive, and with the thinking that the extra spring would help offset the weight of the topper and 100+ lbs of the sleeping platform and a load of outdoor gear.

With that said, here's the sad sag before:


And the happy new springs after:


As you can see, the new springs more or less returned the truck to stock height. There's a very slight rake if you really study it, and that's a-ok with me. I've only put a few miles on the truck since installing the new springs, and I'm sure they'll settle a bit. But, I'm 100% happy with the results right now. The drive home on the freeway from a friend's workshop space was dreamy. I'll be hitting a lot of old two tracks in the snow and mud looking for antelope in Eastern Montana this weekend, and will really put the springs to the test then.

A note about installation: I'm guessing that the springs on there was original to the truck. Springs were likely over 20 years old with nearly 200,000 miles on them. EVERYTHING was stuck in place. I'd doused all the mounting points daily for three days with penetrating fluid, and hit everything with an impact gun. I still had to cut every mounting point with a grinder. The u-bolts are very close to all the rear brake lines, so cutting away at those was especially exciting. I initially did not order new shackles, thinking I might be able to reuse the old ones. Then I read on here about how they're stuck 99.9999% of the time and panicked. D'oh! Fortunately, a local suspension shop had exactly two in stock. All said, I'd highly advise buying all the new hardware you'd possibly need as a contingency plan in case everything is stuck in place. Better to have and not need than need and not have, right?

 

Great write up and comparison (before/after)!

Cheers

 

Following up after 10,000 miles on the springs. I must’ve received the Extra Lean model, as they’re already sagging hard and the lean is super apparent. The smile shape of the spring has turned into the wavy flat grimace.

I’d likely not buy the SD from General Springs again.

This is under the weight of a fiberglass topper and the equivalent to a little less than a sheet of 3/4” OSB used for my sleeping platform.

I know it’s been said before, but could someone PLEASE make a good stock height spring? Pretty please!?

 

Put air bags on and be done

 

That’s like the airbag kit and a compressor though, right? Seems spendy.

I’m gonna holler at an old school spring and suspension shop in Brooklyn and see if they’ll make a new leaf to add. Otherwise, the airbags to make it look like I’d be able to level everything out nice and smooth.

 

I went with the standard Airlift kit, Schrader valves in the license plate, I think it was like $300, I've been running the equivalent kit on my f350's since '10

 

Ah, that sounds much simpler than the compressor under the truck and a button that I’d imagined. I could just use my little cig lighter powered compressor on that. I’ll certainly look into it. Would be great to have a level truck and all this spring foolery finished with.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for the review. I was debating on sd vs hd but this helps.

 

In retrospect I'd go HD for sure. I do keep a lot of "junk in the trunk" so to speak. But man, those standard springs settled right in.

I ended up following the above advice and got some Ride Rite air bags for the truck and now its all leveled up for the most part. To get the back even the driver's side takes between 25-30 PSI while the passenger side takes the minimum 5 PSI. Pretty substantial difference.