Not many people running 35's and even less documenting it, so I am curious if anyone is running 35's(35x12.5 or 315/70) without cutting around the entire fender flare and cutting the metal as well?

BMC, pinch weld mod and rocker cap are givens. I would rather just not cut up the stock fender just to run them. If not, 34's is probably the way to go.

I am not worried about the rear and the metaltech bumstop extensions are longer than normal to accomodate the long travel and meant to limit stuffing 35's correctly.

Current suspension setup:
Front: 6112 heavy load with RSG tophats giving 3" lift in front, dirt king UCA and caster at 4*, energy bump stops
Rear: Metaltech Icon 2.5 resi long travel w dobinsons 677v springs 3" lift, dr kdss panhard correction, extended brake lines, metaltech lower and upper links

Wheels are 17x9 -12 so no crazy offsets to make fitment more difficult.

There is no way you can run that tire size without ripping your fenders and flares off road. Anyone who says otherwise is just mall crawling.

Just space down your front bumpstops like the rear ones, and keep a little extra room if you hit higher speed bumps to allow room to compress the bumpstop material. Slow rock crawling won't compress the bumpstop material much.

Even if slow crawling offroad and not taking jumps etc?

I was hoping something like that would be possible as long as it is still functional offroad.

I was also looking into MPD fenders possibly but I would hate to lose the fender line or be forced to add a snorkel to protect the intake.

I run 35s without cutting the fenders...

With that being said, I'm about to cut my fenders

Daily driving is fine, but if you want to use off road, you will need to cut, or deal with misaligned fenders.

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Yea I'm thinking about just doing 34's (285/75) or if I do decide on 35s I would need to get fiberglass fenders. I really don't want to chop up nice OEM fenders if I dont need to. I would definitely need to use them offroad, as that is all I use it for since it's not my daily. More crawling type of offroading though and not baja style in CO/NM/UT.

I had to cut my fenders even for 35x10.5s. Maybe if you did a body lift and some bumpstop extensions to stop the tire from getting up into the fenders.

Way easier to just cut the fenders.

Every truck is different a little bit and every setup varies some. I ran 34's for a long time with plenty of clearance. So - first it'll depend on which 35" tire you want. If it's 34.5" tall - I think you could realistically run it with only a front fender liner mod, bumper trim, and BMC if you use stock ish offset wheels. Like a BFG AT. I think that would fit pretty easily.

The other thing that will help is to NOT lift it much or at all. If you keep it to low ride height, you can retain proper caster angles by maxing out your forward position of the lower ball joint and NOT need to use aftermarket upper control arms. All of the caster correction UCAs move the upper ball joint back toward the firewall. Keeping stock UCAs gives you more firewall clearance. You'll have more clearance for larger tires at stock height than lifted with UCAs.

A third option is to make a custom LCA. I've detailed somewhere on here how I would do it, but I have not done it. I don't even have a 4Runner anymore. But I would buy new LCAs and have a professional welder - I mean a real professional - weld the lower ball joint cast steel ends on the opposite arms. That will move the lower ball joint about 1 inch forward on both side. That alone should get you both plenty of clearance for the 35s and enough caster to run a higher lift without needing UCAs. And it probably won't cost much more than a set of aftermarket UCAs. One other note is that the cast end part that is the ball joint mounting piece incorporates a cast in steering stop. You'll need to re-crate that. Don't leave it without the steering stop or you might damage something.

A second option would be to take the stock LCA, press out the bushings, cut the bushing sleeves off and relocate them to move the LCA forward half an inch to a full inch, then re-weld back on. This should also net the same result. The only difference here is that you would also be retaining the relationship between the lower coilover mount and axle. My one concern with the ball joint swap was whether you'd end up with contact between the coil over and the axle as you sweep through the turn radius. In my case - using fox coilovers, I could just modify the misalignment spacers to adjust the lower shock mount fore/aft location. With other coil overs you may or may not need some adjusting. You'd just have to mock it up and see how it works. I think it'll work, but I don't know.

To be clear on this - I have not done it myself. My 285/75/17s - 34's - fit fine with good alignment and BMC with stock bump stops and full flex in all situations without rub. I think the modified LCA is the best solution for this and I'm a bit surprised no one is selling this as a pre-packaged solution.


Is the extra tire size worth the effort? That's really a question only you can answer. For me it wasn't, but I also wasn't using my 4Runner as a primary trail rig.

Here's a picture of what you'd get just by switching sides on the lower ball joint outer cast assembly. It's subtle, but would be enough I think to clear 35's without any firewall modification. And - side benefit is that it'll look completely stock. So you can play dumb "Yeah, mine fits 35's easy. It's all stock under there. I just bolted them on and it had plenty of clearance, not sure what's up with your 4Runner." :

I was just curious how feasible it was and if anyone was doing it. I don't think it seems very practical to go through all that for .5" at this point. I am leaning more towards staying with 33 or going up to 34" with just a little more work.

I hardly drive it these days as well so it pretty much is just for deep snow, camping/fishing/hunting and hauling stuff. Didn't even see 5k last year and probably less this year.

Umm... Why does everyone stack lifts and springs and spring spacers and then switch to aftermarket coil overs to try to stuff big tires under their vehicle when there are perfectly good systems made that actually give you REAL measurable lift so you can actually fit larger tires with less headache?

6" Performance System w/ Front Dirt Logic 2.5 Resi Coilovers & Rear Dirt Logic Shocks - K7068DL - Fabtech(R)

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Whos stacking lift springs and spacers? Those 6" lift kits are just for show/mall crawlers and are pretty much the definition of adding spring spacers just for looks. The easiest way to make them fit is with long travel kits.

I am sure you've been on the forums and out in the world long enough to see people who put coil spacers on top of the coil-over, along with lift springs on the coil-over, and people who have done the spring spacer, coil-over spacer, and lift springs. These are pushing the A-arm down to provide lift sure, but anything above 2.5" in the front and you dont really have the ability to do a perfect alignment, the caster is going to be out of spec ect. Plus the ball joint in the upper A-arm is at a pretty good angle.

The drop down brackets to lower the lower A-arm position, plus the longer spindles to also drop the hub location, and topped off with the longer coil-over is what provides the lift without having axle angle or ball joint angle issues. That kit pictured is 6" of lift up front and with the coil-over top hat being adjustable you could likely dial in the lift to give you 5, or 6, or maybe even 7" of overall lift depending on what you need. This would be my personal opinion on the "best" way to clear a 35" tire without cutting anything since your OP seemed like you were anti-body trimming. I personally prefer the stuffed look and like my tires tucked in under the body. With the tires i like, if i had any offset different than a stock wheel i would rub like crazy. If i was trying to run 35s without rubbing though i would be looking at a lift like pictured above with drop down brackets.
Naturally you have your opinion, i have mine, you might want them stuffed with as little lift as possible and thats ok too. I just dont see them fitting without a lotta cutting.

I ran 285/75's for a while and still had to do some minor bumper trimming, rocker cap trimming, and BMC. I could fully articulate without messing up the fender. If I did it again I think I would have done 295/70 instead of the 285/75's; width looks a little better.

I don't disagree with that kit providing 6" of lift in a way that corrects a-arm angles etc, but doing it the correct way with one of the LT kits such as TC, dirtking, camburg etc. would still keep the lift to a reasonable height while correcting/maintaining correct geometry and driveshaft angles while still providing the same ground clearance of 35's.

The LT kits move the wheels forward as well as outward so the tires wouldn't rub on the firewall. I just am not at a point I am ready to jump down that rabbit hole.

That 6" lift also would be worse offroad because the center of gravity would be so much higher. I know in some situations I have already been in, if I had a 6" lift I would have flipped.

Yea I have my front bumper trimmed back quite a bit so it should clear, just need to do the bmc and pinch weld mod. I also saw a company makes high clearance endcaps and ordered those instead of having to trim my oem ones. Thanks for confirmation that 285/75 is much easier to stuff. 295/70 would be nice but falken doesn't offer wildpeaks in that size unfortunately.