Replacing the spacers

I want one... like the ones you see on Jack Hanna... tough as nails

 

This is the only way to ensure that your drivetrain can handle tires big enough to need a 6" lift, too...

 

Real answer; Hawaii.

 

Tru dat, your wheel bearings and ball joints are not gonna be too happy either... they are no bigger than mine

 

LOL TW Cracks me up. Nothing wrong with this kit, if you stay within it's intended use. Watch this video.

https://youtu.be/4qGGsnzqslg

Yes it is possible to not use spacers. Rough Country even offers the lift with struts instead of a spacer.

Anyway, there is alot more information out there besides TW on these kits. There are litterally thousands of people running this exact style lift, even with spacers, and no issues, on many different makes and models. Full size trucks run this style lift CONSTANTLY. This is not a race it jump it, crawl it lift kit. It is primarily for looks, although I'm not saying you cannot off-road at all. There are plenty of people who have reviewed this kit even on a Tacoma and said positive things. Hope TW didn't freak you out too bad. Good luck, and safe wheeling/driving.

Remember gentlemen, not everyone wants or needs an icon stage 9 or a kit that is 3k plus.

 

Also, here is a link to 350ish Tacoma's on 6" lift kits. All of these are the same style kit you posted. Many of them are 3rd gen's as well which is awesome for me to see I can't decide if I want a 3" serious off-road lift or a 6" primarily asthetic lift. I've gone back and forth over and over. We will see.

https://www.customwheeloffset.com/wheel-offset-gallery?year=2019&make=Toyota&model=Tacoma&suspension=Suspension Lift 6q&sort=date

Shameless plug, I've used customwheeloffsets to order wheel and tire packages to my door twice. The company is awesome, and started off SMALL from an enthusiast with an idea of what he wanted to do. They were on shark tank and made it big. Love em. Anyway, probably tmi but I love this stuff so there ya go! Lol

 

Forgive me, I just realized you've got a 2004. Some of what I said is not applicable, (they don't offer the kit with struts instead of the spacers), I believe you will be 100% fine to run this lift though.

 

I’m not planning on going all out on off roading. I’m probably just gonna be using it in the beach mostly

 

Yeah, anyone with a can of Busch on the table is definitely an authority on suspension quality. That dude is hammered.

I like the statement "best shock on the market... [in the $50/per shock price point]"

In other words: they're competing with auto parts store brand stuff. Sweet.

It's not cheap Chinese garbage, it's cheap American garbage.

I don't think anyone here said your truck will explode if you run these kits, we're just saying that for the price, you can get a WAY better performing lift if you stick to 3" or less, and if you want a better performing 6", you need to spend a ton more.

Spelling and grammar errors on their website notwithstanding, I think it would be better if they were honest with what that kit is: the bare minimum. But they dance around things like best shocks for the price, and how this kit "features a durable front and rear cross member" and gives you more ground clearance (even though the tires are what give you the ground clearance, not the lift).

 

@jbrandt @whatstcp "He has a can of Busch" and "they have spelling errors on there website" is not a good argument. You say that no one said his "truck will explode" but you might as well have said it. You've all told him "Just return it" and the most recent comment says "hits a twig and his tire pops... or tries to off-road at all". Lol It is insane how any lift over 4" and lower price point tires/equipment get treated on TW. RC makes a great quality product for it's intended use. You can off-road with most RC products. Their most recent shock (n3) is heavy-duty and even better than there mediocre shocks in the past. I've owned RC. I've ofroaded RC. I've owned custom purpose built ofroad rigs with thousand of dollars in suspension, I've owned tires as expensive as Nitto, and I've owned tires as cheap as Atturo. There is a proper place for all of them. Honestly, there are even certain off-road situations where I'd prefer to take a 6 RC equipped Tacoma on 35" Atturo tires OVER a Tacoma on a 3" Icon lift with 33" Nitto's on her.

Anyway, I'll leave you both with questions.

Why do companies like RC still exist if people hate them so much?

Have any of you on this thread ever ran a RC product?

All in all, I've been doing this a long time, and in my experience I have not had ANY of the listed problems @whatstcp just listed with any of my lower budget lifts, unless it is a spacer ONLY lift, with no other parts to correct angles. The kit the OP posted has everything he needs. I have actual first hand knowledge of these kits. I dont mean to insult people on this forum, I just want the OP to know there is definitly a use and place for a lift like the one he purchased and he doesn't need to just "return it" or throw it in the garbage.

 

for what it's worth, I'm just an "Old Man", and I've read many, many, posts and builds here on TW. If I had the money to do a decent lift "Mod" on my truck (03DC4x4), I'd get a OEM full suspension kit and call it a day.

 

I can respect that! I believe you meant OME? That OME kit looks like a great setup for a great price. The OP already purchased the lift he wanted though.

 

@4x4erik , yes I meant OME, I'm dyslexic at times, get my letters and numbers backwards. And for the record, I priced a complete OEM replacement suspension setup, and would buy the OME kit before I'd spend the money on original Toyota parts.

 

I wonder what kind of drugs the person who made that kit was on.
I don't even trust the balljoints half the time as they are without all that extra stuff bolted in between them.
let alone the rear you want to lift it 6" with a block?? that is going to be terrible.
If you use it for sure do not bolt anything extra in there, it will probably max it out.

All you need is a 2.5" to 3" lift and cut some stuff off and you can run the tires you need.
You could have come in at a similar price with rear 2.5" OME springs and bilstein 5100's all around (adjustable for lift up front).
Sure it might be a little more expensive, but that is a suspension you can beat on and not worry, especially since the stock springs are old and tired by now.
If you need that extra height for cruising malls then do a body lift also = easy and budget friendly.

 

I've beat on bracket kits. What specifically are you saying it is missing? The rear is not a 6" block being that they usually keep there lifts leveled, and thousands of people run blocks without issue so I'm not sure why you'd be any different.

Also, the kits most people reference that don't include A-Arms are much worse than the bracket kits keeping most of the stock angles.

A 2.5" kit without a arms to correct the angle on the upper ball joint is a TERRIBLE idea, especially if you use it as intensely as most people imply they will be doing. Your going to eat upper balljoints.

So what exactly would you say is "missing" that is "extra stuff"?

 

I just said it would be terrible in the rear with getting all that lift with a block whether its a 4" or 6" lift in the rear.
The height is alot more and the rear springs are still factory soft and squishy and fatigued = not great.

I have a 2.5" lift and all my alignment came back within spec. Sure at 80mph you could use a little more caster with upper A arms, but even without A arms it will ride better than that 6" lift.
That lift won't stiffen anything up in the front, just put you 6" higher in the air which means lots of roll. when you go up in the air you need a stiffer setup.

The extra stuff is the huge cheap looking spindle spacer to move the ball joint way up in the air.
Then there is the giant shock spacer that retains the soft factory shock/spring, but at least that one looks like steel.

All that lift will do is make the car look like it has a 6" lift, it will not perform like a car lifted 6" in the air should.. it'll probably turn as soft as a Cadillac.

The proper thing to do is like what Jbrandt posted above for 3K + more parts.
extended steel spindles and extended length coilovers with better spring rates, and new rear springs or added leafs to the pack that are stiffer. not spacers everywhere possible.

 

You are right, for some intended uses that would be correct thing to do. For some people, scratch that MANY people, the kit the OP bought is great. Works great. People run them consistently and use them on road and for light to moderate offroading and are still fine *without rolling them.

Just because your vehicle is in alignment spec doesn't mean that your upper ball joint isn't at an angle instead of flat anymore, I can all but guarantee your ball joint is now angled, so when you go over a bump and extend at all it is in turn bottoming out. I'm not saying it doesn't work, it works, you will most definitely have premature wear on that ball joint though, so if people are criticizing the OPs purchase, but don't have a baseline knowledge or experience as to why, it doesn't make sense! His lift will work, as will yours! Even if it is not 100% ideal for all situations... Do you at least understand where I am comming from?

You just stated the engineers who built this kit must be "high" and it just absolutely makes me laugh a little bit as to how little people actually understand about these things but they bash a reputable brand because of basically a perpetuated fallacy that there is some one size fits all lifted setup and there is a magic height that is the only height anyone should ever do period. Or else, they have garbage, or should return their lift.

On a lighter note, someone posted this hilarious meme on a Jeep page I'm a part of, and I love it. Although, I strongly disagree and think its not true it is still tasteful banter

 

The cheap beer and spelling errors weren't my arguments (you read my other posts, so you obviously know that), but they certainly don't help their arguments... The video you posted is a guy who's obviously drunk, and you want us to take him seriously?

So to answer your questions:

1. The company still exists because people buy their products. Tons of people buy Busch beer and harbor freight welders too, but that doesn't mean it's a quality product. That just makes it cheap enough people are willing to buy it.

2. No, I've never owned an RC product because I value performance over aesthetics; a function over form kinda guy.

I've been wheeling 25 years, and have yet to encounter a trail where a cheap 6" spacer/block lift with shit tires would outperform a mid to high end suspension with quality tires. Where is this magic utopia you speak of? I grew up in the hills, and I would routinely pass the big red neck brodozers on the trail in my beater little 4Runner on 32 M/Ts. More often than not they had a huge lift that didn't account for the added height and over extended their driveshaft (ahem, RC, ahem) or bent their lift brackets, or snapped a leaf because of all the axle wrap.

I've said before that even the "high end" 6" lifts out there (fab tech) still use spacers, blocks and low end shocks. So, IMO, even those expensive kits are mostly about aesthetics, not performance (high center of gravity = bad). Yet you're talking about a kit that costs 1/3 of one of those.

Most of the hate for those 4-6" lift kits comes from the mindset of off roading. People have the severely misguided viewpoint that you "need" huge tires and huge lifts to go off roading. Presumably because they see all the brodozers with 35s and chrome drivelines running around. I see several posts a month crop up where someone is asking about getting into off roading and want to know what 6" lift is best, but "they're on a budget".

However, even given the idea that all you're concerned about is aesthetics (which not by itself is necessarily bad), I would still argue it's not advisable to get the cheapest possible kit to achieve your desired results. You can continue to toss in the "for it's intended purpose" caveat as much as you like, it's still just a cheap kit.

But since you like posting videos, here's a few I found:

At about 2:20 the fun starts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLPnU-kiXCA

 

I assume you meant OME (old man emu) correct?

 

I do understand where you are coming from, the lift will work... but it is not very good.
I agree I *could* drive a 6" lifted tacoma with a soft suspension, but it wouldn't be very fun so I wouldn't do that.
I don't have an issue with all 6" lifts, I just said that this particular lift is not the right way to do it.

At least I can still enjoy my lift and save up for A arms.
With that kit, eventually if you want to do it right you will be replacing most of those parts except for the drop brackets.
We can agree that everyone has a different goals, if you just want it up there, then yes it will work for that.