Going to need upper control arms

patkelly4370

patkelly4370

New member
Took the 17 SR5 in for an alignment today. Castor was a no go.
Bought it used from a Toyota dealership. Previous owner had installed 1½" spacers in the front. Can't see what's in back, but the truck sits level.
From day one it has been "twitchy" at highway speeds. Decided to see if anything could be done about it. They could get everything within spec, except castor.
So aftermarket UCAs with increased castor engineered in are my current research project.

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Is a 1.5" lift all you have?

I have a 1.5" lift up front and am able to get 3.6 degrees of caster. No UCA's needed.
 
I will never not say JBA UCAs. Marlin and his crew are awesome, carry top notch customer service, not to mention they have a lifetime warranty.
 
nimby said:
Is a 1.5" lift all you have?



I have a 1.5" lift up front and am able to get 3.6 degrees of caster. No UCA's needed.
Click to expand...
1½" spacer on top of the coilovers yields just under 2½" of lift.
bb63689c5670fb73b423ea708a60adb0.jpg


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jcrown7 said:
I will never not say JBA UCAs. Marlin and his crew are awesome, carry top notch customer service, not to mention they have a lifetime warranty.
Click to expand...
JBA is a top contender for me, other than the color (what's wrong with black?).
I'm also debating new, long travel, coilovers while I have things apart. Get rid of the spacers. The truck is quickly approaching 50,000 miles.
If the Eibach 2.0 was available I'd be on it.
Still researching.

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I just got JBAs delivered for my 2" lift that is going on. at $500 I don't think they can be beat. Easily replaceable joint, great frame side bushings, lifetime warranty (1 year on the joint), and the service is top notch.

I know 2" I probably won't need them, but I decided if I'm going in there I'm going to do it right and get those magical caster numbers and maximize the potential of the new coilovers and let it drive like it should.
 
It's worth watching this guys' content before you choose your suspension. He clears up a lot of misinformation that's been often considered to be fixed knowledge. Tinkerer's Adventure - YouTube

For example fox TRD Pro shocks have about 1.5" of extended travel over the normal ones. AND - the stock UCA has plenty of ball joint range of motion for extended travel shocks. Also many aftermarket shocks are extended travel - they just don't say on the marketing. Bilstein, Ironman, OME etc often have just as much travel as the "extended" travel ICON or Fox setups.

I found that the JBA arms were great - except that they interfered with my tires without spacers in some alignment setups, but not in others. It's very close and happens on full steering lock. But it's something worth considering. It was more of an issue with the 20" wheels than the 17's. I trimmed the material a bit to clear. No reason to buy the HD version. There's practically no load on the UCA and they just add extra dead weight for no reason.

Lots of good options out there for UCAs. They are wildly overpriced for what they are. They should cost about $200/set. I'm not sure why there's so many options north of $500 without meaningful competition bringing prices down to earth. But that's kinda what you're stuck with.

Be careful with the ABS wires. They're very fragile. Take the extra minute to pull the abs wires off the UCA and lower attachment point so you don't stretch em. Otherwise it's $50 for a new one. I've broken them twice. :(

Good luck!
 
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Jetboy said:
It's worth watching this guys' content before you choose your suspension. He clears up a lot of misinformation that's been often considered to be fixed knowledge. Tinkerer's Adventure - YouTube

For example fox TRD Pro shocks have about 1.5" of extended travel over the normal ones. AND - the stock UCA has plenty of ball joint range of motion for extended travel shocks. Also many aftermarket shocks are extended travel - they just don't say on the marketing. Bilstein, Ironman, OME etc often have just as much travel as the "extended" travel ICON or Fox setups.

I found that the JBA arms were great - except that they interfered with my tires without spacers in some alignment setups, but not in others. It's very close and happens on full steering lock. But it's something worth considering. It was more of an issue with the 20" wheels than the 17's. I trimmed the material a bit to clear. No reason to buy the HD version. There's practically no load on the UCA and they just add extra dead weight for no reason.

Lots of good options out there for UCAs. They are wildly overpriced for what they are. They should cost about $200/set. I'm not sure why there's so many options north of $500 without meaningful competition bringing prices down to earth. But that's kinda what you're stuck with.

Be careful with the ABS wires. They're very fragile. Take the extra minute to pull the abs wires off the UCA and lower attachment point so you don't stretch em. Otherwise it's $50 for a new one. I've broken them twice. :(

Good luck!
Click to expand...
I see Tinkerer has an Upper Control Arm comparison video coming out soon.

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2021nightshade4x4 said:
Camburg UCA will take you all the way up to +5.5 degrees of caster.


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Click to expand...

Curious if you'd actually see a difference between 4+ degrees or so with a JBA or 5.5 degrees with a Camburg in a normal application. I.e. your everyday 4R with a 2-3" lift and 285s.
 
Pedro367 said:
Curious if you'd actually see a difference between 4+ degrees or so with a JBA or 5.5 degrees with a Camburg in a normal application. I.e. your everyday 4R with a 2-3" lift and 285s.
Click to expand...


It’s spec’d as a “hi lift” setting on them but Jeep Wranglers are riding around with +6 degrees all day long.

Here is the link. Snap to the last paragraph before the billeted list at the bottom, that’s where I found it:

Camburg Toyota 4-Runner 03-22 | FJ 07-14 KINETIK Series Billet Upper Arms – Camburg Engineering

5a458684a83e2c97a94a5b300fe35513.jpg



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Pedro367 said:
Curious if you'd actually see a difference between 4+ degrees or so with a JBA or 5.5 degrees with a Camburg in a normal application. I.e. your everyday 4R with a 2-3" lift and 285s.
Click to expand...

There's probably a limited benefit between the two, but there's also a downside to high caster arms. Namely adding caster via the upper control arm results in potential for reward relocation of the spindle for two reasons. First is that it physically moves the upper ball joint back to increase caster. Adding 4 degrees of additional caster would require roughly 2cm of relocation of the upper ball joint and that translates to maybe 0.5cm of rearward adjustment of the spindle center with the lower arm unchanged.

Where it's a bigger issue is if you have something like say a 2" lift and you max out the cams on the LCA and you can get 2* of caster. So now if you add a 4* correction UCA - you would then have 6 degrees of caster. Probably too much. So the alignment back to 4* caster will move the LCA back about 1cm and the UCA is back about 2cm, net is probably 1.25cm movement of the spindle (and therefore the wheel location in the fender) toward the firewall and body mount. So, particularly on less than 3 or 3.5" lift heights, the extra high caster arms may give you good alignment geometry, but also cause significant rub where it cleared before.

And if you watch the videos testing travel, you'll see that the higher lift heights result in significant reduction in front articulation and travel. Probably 1.5-2" lift is the best bet and that puts you in a bit of no-man's land UCAs except for the adjustable ones like SPC that let you keep the full forward lower control arm and therefore wheel placement relative to body mount, but also dial in the proper caster and camber. I'm becoming more and more of a fan of the SPC design despite not having ever had them so I can't say from experience.

I think there's a real market for an OEM style stamped low cost arm that adds only 2* of caster, or an aftermarket LCA that adjust caster by 2* for folks who want to run a low height lift, have good geometry, but also run larger tires. I've set mine down to roughly 1" front lift for daily driver duty and I ended up swapping back to the OEM UCAs for this reason - I had too much caster with the JBA at that height and the correct adjustment on the LCA ended up causing rubbing with 34" tires. But with the OEM UCAs I can still get about 3.8* caster, great highway manners, and still fit 34" tires with plenty of fender clearance even with 1" wheel spacers.

Just some experience that might help someone. If you're going 2.5" plus - for sure go for UCAs to correct caster. If you're sticking below 1.5" - I think the OEM ones are better in most cases. If you're going between 1.5 and 2.5 - it's not obvious what the best choice. You're stuck in the middle without an adjustable UCA.


Final thought - I Fawking hate the LCA cam hardware. It's expensive. It seizes very quickly. And it's a huge PITA to get out once it has seized. I need to design a fix kit for it. I have a few ideas of a fix that wouldn't require cutting out the old bushings and sleeves. I'd also love to try building a mini hydraulic press to press out the seized cam sleeves in place, but I just don't have time right now to do it. I think a kit for a portable hydraulic press could be build to do it though and save a lot of alignment shops a lot of labor. Ideally - Toyota should put some better coatings on the hardware so we don't constantly have to fight with this shit. If I buy another new Toyota - I'm going to include that in the sales agreement that the dealer pull them apart when new and completely slather them in antiseize and then re-align it before I take delivery. It's annoying to me to have this issue at 50k miles.
 
Well this has snowballed and is growing into a bigger project.
Ordered the JBA upper control arms, they should be here Tuesday.
While the arms are off what an opportune time to replace the OEM coilovers with a spacer on them, with an Eibach 2.0 Pro Truck suspension.
Also ordered driver lean compensating spacers (Toyota goofed by putting the fuel tank on the driver side).
Also have Rad Rubber flaps coming.
What am I missing?

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patkelly4370 said:
Well this has snowballed and is growing into a bigger project.
Ordered the JBA upper control arms, they should be here Tuesday.
While the arms are off what an opportune time to replace the OEM coilovers with a spacer on them, with an Eibach 2.0 Pro Truck suspension.
Also ordered driver lean compensating spacers (Toyota goofed by putting the fuel tank on the driver side).
Also have Rad Rubber flaps coming.
What am I missing?

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Click to expand...

upgrade the bump stops to duro bump stops

5th Gen 4Runner Front Bump Stops (2010+)
 
Parts have begun to arrive. The upper control arms came in today.
Of course, today is the last day of my vacation. So parts will be arriving while I'm away at work (gone 5 days at a time). Then only 1½ - 2 days to install everything. Doesn't look too difficult. Well, maybe a bit difficult being old.

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Eibach 2.0 front and rear arrived today along with the front driver lean spacer.
Rear driver lean spacer and Rad Rubber inner flaps are on the way.

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