What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

Thanks
Uphillshunter . That was some funny shit .
Anyway you are correct , I got the truck from a guy that drove around on the factory 4600's that were all completely blown for a few years , every spring under this thing is worn the F out ! Its a nightmare to even drive the truck due to the rolling and brake diving it does . Its enough to make you sea sick ! hahahaha
I am still not sure what direction this build is going to go so I settled for the Bilstein stuff due to price . I figured it will atleast get it on the road and trail while I figure it out with out having dumped 3k on shocks . I am still considering straight axle and rear relocation to outside frame rails .
I fully expected to be changing shit out and I know the billies will be fine for a while .

 

4xInnovations front and rear
Excellent fitment. On my 99, minor mod to unbolt a cap on the front of the frame both sides. Easy peasy.

 

Ah yes - but then he gets to catch up, which is the fun part. Especially with the new ADS.

 

Quality, Longevety, very Smooth ride 85mph, 90% of time, dont want wheeling just for wheeling spending gas senseless to climb rough rocks just to proof whom Flex more since is Not cool to risk the expensive Upgrades and pay more in repairs.
I will like to be able to carry family and camp equipment into a long expedition place to get there and camp. Eventually better bumpers and armor may come only if they are really need it, but if travel is not that often , non sense to be so heavy for daily driving. But again making the change from OEM must be once. If you said Icon may going to make cry twice , then is not an option then. Sounds the Allpro Exp are too stiff ( eoblue) so General HD or Dakar or Allpro or J59 8 pack can be ?

Anyway is a lot of money doing front and rear suspension that’s why I wanna do it right, if someone dont buy my truck for 18K now...(posted purpusely high for not to sale it, just wife said gotta go....ok honey lol )

The more money I put into it, less chances that I will sell, these 1st gen are an expensive and nice addiction !

 

SAS? I like your style

 

...Now mid-afternoon, we continued up Big Pryor mountain, through gates and across grassy hillsides. We reveled in the beauty and the took in the views as we climbed, the white clouds and blue skies contrasting so nicely with the golden-green of the landscape. This truly was what we were hoping for on the Re-Tour.

Read the story and lots of pics: The Re-Tour Day 5: We Follow the Sun into the Pryors

The Re-Tour Day 5: We Follow the Sun into the Pryors


--- catch up on the whole story so far ---
[day 1] [day 2] [day 3] [day 4] [day 5]


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Do you know where you'll be at ride height? Kinda with Monte on this one, looks like you'll only have a couple inches of uptravel left once the weight is all back on.


Also, another thing I learned by doing twice: the first rule of shock mounting should be to get the upper mount as high as possible.

 

I had All-pro expos and they weren't stiff enough for me, they actually werent enough. I suggest figuring out what you want your rear lift to be and how much weight you want to carry then order that from Alcan. they make custom leafs to your specs you request and they arent much more than All pros. They were like $820 to my door. I love my Alcans. 3.5" lift + 700lb addition of carry weight. As for the front you will probably be fine with 5100s, but if you want a better ride, Id suggest foxs or kings. I have Icons up front and I dont care for them. My GFs truck has kings all way around and the ride is night and day better.

 

It’s a shit ton of work, atleast it was for me. I used a disk sander and got it done for around 500$ doing it all myself.

 

Right on brother

That's going to be a million percent improvement over the worn out old shit. And the Bilsteins are going to do very well for you for the purposes you intend.

And BTW.. where did you get those rear shocks and how much were they?

I kind of want those for my truck for now. lol

 

Looks good, Dan!

What did you guys use for shock mounts? The uppers look like the Ruff Stuff mounts that I got for mine, but I’m curious which mounts you used for the lowers.

@Speedytech7

 

Also RuffStuff, they're the 10° lowers that they sell for Chevies I believe. You have to take a grinder and cope one side to fit the axle so they're straight instead of angled

 

Damn that's over an inch shorter than what you can get Kings built too

 

Yeah, we will see how it works out. It looks to me like I have very little up travel as well with the truck loaded - 3 inches or so...

But, we put the floor jack under a rear tire and jacked it up until it was lifting the truck, and I still wasn't bottoming out the shocks. So, .

One thing that it does mean is that I need to keep leaf springs on the truck that keep the back and higher. I like my current leafs, so I imagine I'll just buy more of them when they wear out. perhaps my biggest concern is that as they wear out and the back sags I might get into the shocks.

... but hopefully that will be alleviated by the bump stops once I raise them up.

Worst case I cut off and reweld the uppers a bit higher.

Thanks!

Ruffstuff mounts on the bottom as well. had to do a bit of grinding on the axle end of the lowers to remove the 10% angle and get them coming straight off the axle.

Upper/lower mounts:

• https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.co..._Code=R1988-8&Category_Code=shockbracketstabs
• https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.co...ode=SBRKT-175&Category_Code=shockbracketstabs

 

Longer shackles could help but if you're happy with ride height raising the upper mount would be best in my opinion.

For your bumps you could also cut the existing strike plate off and make your own longer one. I did that and extended the wheeler bump tower a bit.

 

Thanks for saying this dude. Sometimes this place seems like an echo chamber of people just ragging on anyone who doesn’t do as they do or say as they say

 

It just annoys the hell out me. I mean this guy had less than 50 posts when he posted that pic. And if you look at his profile it even says "So many mods, so little money"

He's probably a working stiff, with bills, that just wants to improve his truck. That's what we're all fricken here for... right?

He posts a pic of essentialy 15 one hundred dollar bills sitting on the floor and then he's told he should have spent triple what he spent.

It's the same with the whole OEM thing. I know I have a rep for being "anti-OEM" which is not the case... I use OEM any time I can. But my thought is that even MOOG lower ball joints are better than OEM LBJs with 250,000 miles on them... especially if that's what you can afford.

A couple months ago a brand new member with less than 50 posts, posted a pic of about $900 in MOOG parts... it was probably what he could afford, and it was almost certainly better than what was on his 16 year old truck.

And what happened? The know it all assholes came from the wood work to shit on his decision to buy what he could afford... And as far as I know, he's never made a post since. (That's fucked up)

And then the arguement insued. It's stupid.

 

Good said... I'm not the smartest , my wallet is empty but for sure don't want to be the rudest smartass either...is not worth to argue with those clever ones... there is bunch of good people here too , that is why I try to keep up.... tks to all that nicely reply to my dumb q...
My ahead spinning for an unsolved rear axle seal.... wrote a letter to Toyota of Plano to see if they can lower those thousands of dollars quote they gave me .... waiting for answers now...
Cheer Up is December !!!!

 

ADS does a new shock made for doing this I was told by them specifically for our application.

I was surprised at how short there were too but it's awesome!

I suspect this could be in your future. But maybe not.

 

My thought as well, although if that does end up being the case I need to find a more effective measuring method then as well. I drove his axle with one leaf as far up as I could go before, like it was to the point where it was lifting it back up off the jack stands and my bouncing wouldn't make it frown anymore. And that was the upper boundary. His leafs almost never invert, but now I need to know what is the variable we missed. We didn't account for the bumpstop on the shock, so there's is an inch more shaft to go. The whole thing cycled like 8.5"