And onto the modding; so I have bad news that I have some money issues going on and the long travel is going to have to wait. The plan is still to make the new upper and lower A arms, and I will have the fiberglass fenders, but I can't afford coilovers ($261/each), coils ($65/each and need either 2x or 4x), CVs ($100+/each), and that's just to have it be able to sit on its feet. Then I would need bump stops ($170/each) and extended brake lines (???). So that's a minimum $1000 to get it working, and another probably $500 to make it fully functional. So in essence, by the end of winter break I will have made a long travel kit like you can buy off the shelf. Not to fret! It's still gonna happen, but probably in the march/spring break timeline if I can work and save up during the semester.
So onto cooler things
Today I spent a long time, like 6 hours, playing with the front suspension. Pulled the truck into the garage and removed the coilover on the drivers side, and just cycled the suspension and got a feeling for what I plan to actually do and double checked/fixed my measurements I needed for the lower and upper arms.
The MAX stock suspension travel, which for us technically means how far can the suspension go from full bump (being limited by bump stops) to full droop (limited by CV), is 8", which my Bilstein 5100s appear to be able to use most/all of that.
Now, something VERY interesting is that at full bump (lower arm is pushed all the way up to the bump stop), the CV isn't very far past perpendicular to the frame... If you're not following, it means if you just cut off the stock bump stops and make your shocks sit taller, you can gain a ton of travel and probably easily get 10-11". Just something interesting, and I'm not saying go do that since I'm sure something hits somewhere otherwise Toyota would of just done that. Regardless, I'm gonna have to cut everything off where the bump stops are so that I CAN get all that special up travel.
For anyone who doesn't believe me, and I double checked this multiple times
And here is a picture of my work station with the computer firing up. As you can see the jack is just being used to adjust where the suspension is sitting and isn't taking any weight of the truck since the coilover is removed.
With the suspension at full droop, it looks like the CV is binding/limiting at about a 30 degree angle. I couldn't get a good measurement and I didn't want to pull the CV though. I also generally measured it's 9" from CV joint to CV joint, and at 30 degrees deflection with a 9" leg of a triangle that means the vertical distance is 5.2", which matches what the cycling of 8" was since the bump travel was limited. Using proportionate triangles, and assuming a Tundra CV is 3" longer (as all the kits seem to follow that), you get a vertical distance of 6.9". I plan to get as much travel as I can, which means the limiting factor (as is usually the case I believe) of the long travel will be the CV. So I can theoretically get almost 14" of working 4WD travel in the IFS, which matches what Total Chaos says with their kit getting 13" if I remember right.
Here are all the measurements I retook:
I want to run dual rate coilovers, which typically is at least a 10" travel shock. At the stock shock mount on the arm, that involves being tight as ass against the inner fender or having to cut into it. A quick thing on basic suspension design is that you want your shock to approach 90 degrees to the direction of travel (so parallel to the tangent), worse comes to worse you don't get to 90 degrees, but the point is you want to be approaching it and not go PAST it or have the angle decrease as the suspension goes up, this is so as the suspension compresses the "efficiency" (because you have a sin loss) increases and so it gets stiffer as you approach full bump, e.g. bottoming out, so it helps. In the stock shock mount that doesn't happen, so I need to move the shock mount out further on the arm, which should in turn lower the frame mount so I don't need to cut on the inner fender while also improving the shock angle during cycling. Hopefully that made some sense if anyone read all the way down here; point is, hopefully I don't need to cut up my inner fenders which I think I should be good if I play some angle games.
Finally, some miscellaneous stuff:
My passenger side mirror didn't like to scroll to the right, so I took it apart to fix it. Turns out you have two little motors with gears, and then a little hand so to speak that turns a joint that then moves up a thread form; it turned out the little hand wasn't engaging in one direction. Since my drivers side mirror is still royally messed up, I took it apart too and just swapped parts over.
I also fixed the wiring issue with my left LED, as I suspected the power cable had just been disconnected.
When I was putting the suspension back together I found my inner tie rod on the drivers side is shot. I've been feeling some weird wiggling at speeds ever since I had my rear link break, but that got fixed and I still had it to some extent (helped with the rear sway bar reconnected). I was wondering if my front tires were out of alignment and maybe that was doing something, turns out I wasn't totally off. Hopefully replacing that will fix the wiggling/shifting issues I've been getting.
And Secret Santa, if you read this, I will ship my stuff out tomorrow or Tuesday. I got my dad one too, and had him open it early, and it's a lot crappier than the picture showed so I'll try to find something to make up for it at REI. If anyone actually read this, I give you thanks and congrats
Have a good week!
EDIT:
Curious about the article about $500 gears. Most places I have looked at the pair of gear sets alone will run you that much and that is without install kits or installation.
Are you going to build your windshield bracket for the light bar? Curious about this as well.
Yea, I plan to build the bracket out of just 1/8" steel or something and mount in the door frame like steezemcqueen and downpour did. I should have the light bar in the next few days. And I'll have to find the magazine, it was DIY Toyota or something along those lines.
Oh well, gotta pay to play! I was expecting to get Taco fenders but he said he had just started making 3rd gen fenders but didn't have any pictures since only one set had been made so far and they didn't have pictures yet, so going on faith here! 3-4 week lead time, hopefully I'll have them before I head back to school...
