MIKEMOKAS

does anyone run, or know anybody that runs the 3.5in rancho and a 4in bracket lift together? i have the 4in installed and added aal's in the back and now the ass end sits wayy higher. and i have a 3.5in rancho that i was thinking about installing.

anybody know how thick those rancho torsions are?

do i really need to run the rancho upper arms? because you can run thicker tbars with stock upper arms.

do the arms achieve any lift?, or are they solely to correct allignment.

whats your guys honest opinions? do it, or not?

FWIW, im ready for an allignment here shortly.

thanks.

elripster

To answer any of these questions or provide feedback we need to know how you intend to wheel the truck. That's what should drive your vehicle modifications.

Frank

abecedarian

and knowing which rancho kit you're thinking about would help as well.

tc

Why don't you just take the AAL's out then?

Very likely the rear will settle too. I wouldn't be too hasty to combine lifts - you're gonna get all the bad characteristics of both, and probably not many of the positives.

MIKEMOKAS

its my dd, and i love to go mudding/ trail riding with all of my friends.

well i searched ranchos site for a while and finally found the toyotas under the catalog, but it dosent show that they have ANY lift for 89-94 pickups/ 4runners... anyways, its a retired rancho 3.5in lift. it includes tbars, upper arms, front crossmember, and two diff drop brkts.







is the same type of lift that bear80 started out with.

well i love the height that it sits at in the rear. 35's would be perfect if the front matched the back. 35's off road, 31's DD.

the goal would eventually be 4in springs and retain the 3.5in blocks to go along with the 7.5in front lift.

how long usually untill the springs start to settle?

thanks guys.

elripster

Springs settle pretty fast. One wheeling trip or heavy load should do it.

For a DD you can combine these lifts but beware that people have had alignment issues with the Rancho upper arms.

In the mud it should be fine as well. On the trail it will be tippy. If you hit the lift bracketry (4" lift only) it will shift and you will be aligning your truck often. At least you can do that yourself. The steep angles created by the rancho arms will stress the steering which is not an issue as long as you stay on pavement and in mud. If you get into rocks or deeply rutted roads it will be an issue.

Just being honest here, high does not equal better especially on IFS. If it's for looks cool but if you are after function bracket lifts and rancho arms are probably a step in the wrong direction.



Frank

abecedarian

The rancho arms are basically re-indexed to set lower, and are longer than the stock a-arms to push the top of the knuckle back out to compensate for the arm angle. Their diff drop lowers differential to reduce binding on the CV's.

Personally, I wouldn't combine a 4" bracket lift with diff drop kit since a 4" bracket lift already drops the diff and mating the two drops would be quite involved- spacers bolted to spacers doesn't sound safe to me, and the front driveshaft length may not be enough.

MIKEMOKAS

i never really thought about the two diff drops. i thought since the bracket lift drops the diff 4in it would be enough, but in reality that just brings everything back to stock positions, just 4in down. good point.

would you happen to know which adjustment they run out of when trying to allign with the rancho upper arms? caster? camber?

ok. so now im leaning twards removing the hard riding aal's and going with a 4in block untill i can afford 4in springs. and if it sits a lil higher in the back with a 4in block ill turn the tbars untill it sits level, and nothing more.

so heres my final question. what is the PROPER PROCEDURE for ADJUSTING the tbars?

thanks!

elripster

The t-bar procedure is pretty documented on this site and others so I won't re-type it. www.sdori.com has alignment instructions on it.

Camber becomes the issue with alignment. If the tail of your truck sits too much higher than the front you could have caster issues too but with wide off road tires that's usually not much of a problem anyway.

I would put a smaller block in the rear to level the truck before cranking the t-bars. That will lessen axle wrap.

The thing to remember is that you have a given amount of travel. You are changing where in that window the front suspension resides at rest. For trail performance, you need up AND down travel. Cranking the bars sacrifices up travel for down. To contrast, ball joint spacers will let you have 1.5" of lift while retaining that 1.5" of down travel you would have lost had you simply cranked the t-bars. Granted for higher speed stuff you need more up travel than you do down.

Frank

tc

You should be able to fit 35's EASILY with just the bracket lift.

No way in hell would I trade an AAL for blocks on 17 yr old springs. Leaf springs have been known to break ya know!

Save all this money and get proper gearing in your truck.

abecedarian

here's what blocks can do for leafs-
blocks after 1 year on an 88 4runner- notice the bending in the leafs looks like a wave



it's hard to tell, but the bend in the springs actually moved the axle about 1/2" toward the rear and was causing a nice vibration from the u-joint angle

FWIW: the blocks were removed a few months ago in exchange for procomp 4-5" springs.

abecedarian

yeah, I think 35" will fit with a 4" bracket (it's got 31" and the procomp 33311 springs on it now):


lol... I just realized you could see more than half the wheel on the neighbors ford festiva under my truck...and I was shooting downwards