On Sunday I drove the 400 miles to Kalamazoo Michigan where Victory 4x4 calls home. On Black Friday I had purchased a whole mess of upgrades for my 2019 4runner and because of a confluence of several factors, I don't have any tools or a shop locally that could do the install for me. But, I like driving and who better to install aftermarket stuff then the people who made it!
At 9:30am on Monday morning I handed Victory my keys and ubered my way to the hotel while they installed
- A Strike rear bumper
- Left and Right adventure carriers
- spare tire carrier
- camera relo kit
- Front, Mid, Transfer Case and Gas tank aluminum skid plates
- Rear cube lights and a ladder for the passenger side adventure carrier.
When I got there, Corey took me around the shop, showed me all the goodies that they do (Trogdor is amazing) and then I hung out for a little bit while they got to work. The next morning I came back to the shop and one of the guys had stayed late to make sure I would be good to go and I was able to start driving back home at 10am. Everyone was SUPER nice and very hospitable and I saw at least 4 other customers getting the same treatment and tour of the shop while I was there.
The drive up gave me a chance to benchmark how the truck performed so I ran torque on my tablet the entire way.
Prior to the upgrades I got between 22 and 19mpg depending on if I was at 60mph or 70 with an overall average of 19.
Afterwards my MPGs were between 22 and 18.4, again between 60mph or 70 with the overall average being 18.5.
The stock suspension WILL handle the weight, but it dropped around an inch in the rear leveling it out overall.
It's hard to explain how solid the bumper feels. There is 0 flex. I mean none. You can fully extend out a carrier and lean on it and the only thing that is going to happen is the car is going to move. The carriers open smoothly and latch solidly and there is no creaking or squeaking anywhere. The driver side adventure carrier with the ladder is awful close to the hatch when you open and close it, maybe about an inch of clearance so I will have to be very careful that I make sure to open that dude all the way before I close the hatch.
The camera relo is a little cumbersome because of the factory plug for the camera, but it takes about 30 seconds to pop it off and get access to the spare tire.
I opted for the aluminum skids to try to save some weight (he says after adding 200lbs of bumper stuffs) and it's a real shame that they are under the car. The way they interlock just looks sweet and the powder coating is very nice. There are cutouts for easy access to the oil filter and drain plugs. I'm running a Warn front bumper which doesn't mate up cleanly with the Victory front skid, so there is a little bit of a gap between the two. Nothing vital is exposed or at risk (ignore how horrifying it looks in the picture) but when everything else is so clean it does stand out a bit. I'll probably end up trying to come up with a piece to close that gap
My only regret on the whole process is that I didn't order sliders from Victory. I ordered a set from another vendor at the same time and those things are still being fabbed up and haven't shipped almost 2 months later. I'll update this thread over time as stuff breaks in and if I have any troubles