Hey guys, just installed the Toytec ultimate lift. Love it. Had everything nice and tight, or so I thought. Turns out the upper shock mounts are loose, and if I try to tighten them with a ratchet I can't get the ratchet back out. So tips? What's an "easy" way of getting them tight???

I used a box wrench on stud and turned shock body with other hand.

I tightened a nut down as much as I could after gooping it with lock tite and then took a lock washer and another nut gooped wih lock tite to jam it up. No issues, essentially hand tightened since it was such a pain in the ass.


And turning the shock body doesn't turn the shock spindle as far as I know, so you were only torquing the nut down to as much friction as the O-rings in the assembly had.

I can't remember what I did but reading this makes me want to check them

yeah I was thinking that maybe putting just a wrench up top, then pulling the upper shock off from the bracket, then tightening the bracket piece, THEN putting the shock back on to the bracket. Seem's like a lot of hassle, but it only has to be done once basically

It's a poor design in my opinion honestly, it's a B*TCH to get to it with the body on... lol

I have no idea what you are talking about here, but it sounds alot more complicated than it needs to be... I just used a deep socket and was able to tighten it without too much problem. IIRC it was a bit slow going with a difficult angle for my arm, but not as bad as the power steering tensioner.

What is the "bracket piece" that you can tighten? It's just the shock stud, 3 flanges, 2 rubber pads, and a nut. Then the bracket it goes through is welded to the frame.

Next time I'm doing it I'm just gonna weld a shock mount to the outside of the frame like some people do. You could always do a body lift so you could kinda see/feel what you're doing.

What I'm talking about with the bracket piece is that with the Bilstien shocks, it's literally like a ]- <-- that's what it looks like. The top is a bolt that is put through the normal shock mounting hole, Then the top of the shock mounts below that normal bracket that you're talking about. It basically just makes future shock swaps a lot easier.

My problem is that the nut up top is a 1" nut, and the bolt is long, so when it tightens down, it leaves the ratchet head being forced against the body with no way to get it off.

What I'm saying is that taking JUST the bracket piece, tighten that piece down, THEN remount the shock on the lower side of the bracket. If I had a picture of it things would be much clearer. :/

You can do what 4-Ripcord did and make a new shock mount on the outside of the frame:



Or get a set from Toytec and put their adapter on one time and never mess with a stud mount shock again.

Rear Bilstein Shocks for 96-02 4RUN

RIP

If you're talking about the 5125's from Toytec, Then your plan was exactly what I did. Put the bracket on first and tightened it, then installed the shock. They do have a tendency to come loose after putting the truck back down and driving for a while. Re-tightened them once and never had another problem -

YES EXACTLY! Ok sweet well now I have that as a plan then. Could you get a socket on the bottom side of the bracket piece? (not sure if I could cuz of spot welds and close proximty blah blah blah) Theoretically my preferred method would be to just put an air gun on it and make it super tight haha

Can't quite remember. I know we couldn't use an impact. If I recall, I think we held the head of the bolt on the bottom with a wrench and shimmied a ratchet wrench into entirely dumb spot above and just cranked on it a little at a time. Spent all of about 10 mins. under there re-tightening.

Yup, a wrench to hold the bracket works.

and if they keep coming loose and driving you crazy like mine did, weld the adapter to the original mount!