When I bought the 4runner, the previous owner had 906s with OME shocks for the rear. Eventually, I'll be adding some things that are going to weigh down the back more, so I figured I might as well upgrade the rear lift. I found a deal on some 8 wraps, ordered some extended travel Bilstein 5100s, and took some bump stops off a junkyard Blazer and went to town.

Here's some comparison shots:





I had a buddy that has air tools help me out with this one to make my life a little easier. We decided to drop the whole axle in hopes of being able to wedge the springs in there without a compressor on them:



The coils were just way too long, so spring compressors were still needed, and in they went:




Getting everything lined back up with the 8 wraps in was no easy task, but it was finally accomplished with the help of some tie downs to pull the axle back into position so we could get the UCAs bolted in again:



I decided to go test it out, and right away there was a problem. The driveshaft was hitting the stock gas tank skid, on a flat, paved road. Not good, so it had to go. Here you can see I don't have much room at all between the gas tank and the driveshaft:



Not sure if something didn't get aligned right when it was put back together, or if that's just how close my driveshaft is going to be to the gas tank now, but I'll have to check it out again when I have some more time.

After the gas tank skid was off, I took it out for a quick little wheeling trip to see if I had any other apparent problems. I got bored waiting for my buddy to get his ice chest situated again after it tipped over in the back of his Heep, so I decided to park on a rock:



And then later on I decided to park on another, slightly bigger one (ignore his finger in the way.. he's not a professional photographer obviously):



And the Jeep on the same rock, but with a better angle:



Oh, and we decided it would be a good time to fix my newly leaking rear axle seal:



Old one:



New one in:



And everything went back together, and the drum was cleaned up, all pretty uneventfully. My wheel bearing is shot though, so I'll be doing this again in the near future, this time replacing the bearing as well. But at least I won't have to worry about it for the time being.

And here's a picture all Instagram'd out of the Runner once everything was all back together:



I was surprised at just how much lift these 8 wraps gave me. My guess is these were lightly used ones, and not ones that were fully settled. As soon as I can find my tape measure, I'm going to get some hub to fender measurements. Pre 8 wrap hub to fender measurements were somewhere in the range of 24.25" passenger, 24" driver. I did a quick measurement after I was done, and it was somewhere around 26.5" on the driver side I'm going to have to check it again though to be sure.