Most comfortable highway/pavement princess suspension setup

Before the "it's a truck, what do you expect? what are you comparing it to?" comments, I would like to just get this out of the way: my suspension is a$$, to the point I flinch when hitting rough road and pavement.

I am not 100% positive, but I believe I have OEM suspension on me 2006 DoubleCab Short Bed Prerunner. I believe the "lifted look" is stock and no modifications have occured. I do put ~240 lbs of sand in the bed just to help remediate some of the harshness of the ride.

Any suggestions on best suspension upgrades for happy highway riding would be great. Ideally ones that people pull off their tacoma's of other trims and put on Ebay for a decent price, thank you!

 

What tire pressure are you running? What tires? Load rating of tires.

 

If it's a 2006.. and it's still riding on the original set of shocks & leaf springs.. simply replacing them like-for-like with new ones will go a long way toward restoring ride quality. If you want greater load-damping capacity then you'd want to look into heavier-duty front coils & rear shocks in the 2"-diameter-and-up range.

 

@rnish I've tried 30 - 40, might be slightly better now that I am down to 30 from the overfill the shops do to them. The tires are: Kelly Edge AT Tire 265/70R17 115T (Manufacture Date of 14th week of 2018). The wheels themselves are 1" larger in diameter than the stock steels, it is on 4-runner/rav4 or highlander tires.

 

@GilbertOz Understood, I come from the Midwest so I usually can gauge how old parts are by the level of rust, not any more here on the east coast. I can see that the leaf springs were R&R in 2017 at 98k miles (it's at 130k now). It also had the whole frame replaced for the TSB April of 2019. I am not familiar enough with suspension work to say if they look older or not, I can't visually see any leaking on the shocks. I also can't find any other service records from previous owners so, unsure. I tried the "shake" and brake tests while driving and the suspension appeared to not be super alarming, but I also am novice at that.

 

From what I've heard and read here on TW, there is a difference between the OEM TRD yellows and the aftermarket Bilstein 4600's. The aftermarket ones will provide you with a much smoother ride and a better and beefier shock all the way around.

 

BTW "it's a truck" is not a reasonable response to a bombed-out, floppy suspension that's hitting the bump stops regularly even on normal pavement.

Yes, probably >50% (or more) of the cost of replacing shocks is the labor alone, so it would make sense to go with a "better-than-stock" replacement. Lots of discussion on this elsewhere on TW forums. Try the "suspension" forum? https://www.tacomaworld.com/forums/suspension.18/

 

The best suspension you can probably do with any sort of warranty and lower price is

Bilstein 6112
5160. Sometimes sold as takeoffs when people go higher
Hammer hangers, optional
Icon RXT, find used $250-300

Any more than that gets into bigger shock territory that doesn’t have warranty and needs rebuilds more often. And costs significantly more.
Like Fox 2.5 etc

 

I would just start with new tires. You can't do much about running 17s (compared to stock 16s which give you more sidewall flex which is a good thing in this case) but you could go with a highway tread, standard load rating size (so none of that Load Range E 10-ply crap). You've got Kelly tires which I believe are manufactured by Goodyear and my experience has been that their rubber compound is as hard as a rock and only gets worse with use.

Michelin Defenders have a stellar reputation on this site and I honestly believe they make my Taco ride like a sedan (compared to the Cooper Discoverer and Bridgestones that were on it before).