Here's a few pictures from last nights install. The only thing that never showed up from Amazon (still says "on its way") was the front poly swaybar bushings. Luckily those are easy to access and we removed and anti-siezed the bolts for the bar itself so I should have no problem popping it off and putting those on once they arrive. My friend whos house we did this at did most of the hard work while I messed around with a few little things and overall just looked around the underside of the truck since I am not as familiar with it as I was my Volvo beforehand.

First impressions... WOW. The Xreas was very wofty, loose in turns, this is much tighter and rides a bit firmer but not "rough" by any means. That being said, I am used to lowered european cars on low profile tires, so a rough ride is all relative and this thing is like a cloud in comparison.

Beforehand, I had some noise from the front right that I suspected was an end link, and sure enough, the front endlinks were shot. I replaced all 4 corners with MOOG and everything is tight and quiet now. I am honestly blown away by how much of a difference this made, I wish I had done it before my 6hr each way roadtrip for work last week.

The thing that everyone likely wants to know is the height change.

Front went up 1.75", Rear up 1", truck sits just about level and you can certainly feel the difference of leveling from in the cabin, next major exterior upgrade will be wheels and tires, but for now I'm pretty darn pleased with this install. Those measurements were taken after setting the truck down and giving it a bounce. I will remeasure in a day or two when it's not torrential down pouring.

During the installation


Front beforehand (sprayed down with pb)


Front after


Rear After


General Crusty Midwest Undercarriage picture. I spent some time poking around to assess the frame condition and it's mostly all surface. I used a flashlight to look inside the frame rails where I could and they all look pretty good. I plan to fluid film the inside and then POR15 the outside in the spring.



Buttoned back up and waiting to be set down.


The only difficulty we really had was with the rear upper shock mounts, the ones from the Xreas shocks were taller and the thread length on the Tacoma rear shocks was shorter than the Xreas so we had to shave down the Xreas rear mounts to make everything work right. It really wasn't that much work, it was just tedious as we didn't anticipate it.

Overall labor cost for approximately 4 hours of his work and access to a lift/tools came out to $150 with me helping just a little bit.

More pics to come in the next few days, this was a great upgrade and I think is just the right amount of lift that I was looking for based on my anticipated use.