AustinTaco

It all started here after first reading Andy's post about doing the tundra coil swap on his 4runner. I was late to the game so I had alot of reading to do between here and TTORA, and then it was off to hunt down all of the parts. I would like to thank the following members, shops, suppliers, and people for their contributions to the project:

Jacques aka Gumbo of trdparts4u.com. I bought the coils and shocks from him through the classifieds on here and he was available for some quick knowledge when needed. Definitely a good source for parts and info and a cool dude.


Steve of Sonoran Steel fame supplied the diff drop, brake lines, spacers, and e brake bracket. This guy knows what he is talking about and if you use one of his products you will immediately see the engineering that went into it. Diff drops get crapped on by the boards, but you should see one of his in place and installed.
All Pro supplied the 3" springs and they were on sale for $289! If it had not been for the sale, I would have been doing the AAL and shackle dance, but these springs rock.
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Shox.com had the Bilsteins for $75 each and thanks to Steve at Sonoran, I ordered the right ones!

Cameron and Glenn of Krawltex, Krawltex.com, here in Austin got the lift put on even though they are both mainly jeep guys. If you live in the area, you should stop by their shop just to see some of the projects. I happened to see them outside when I was out running and we set up a date to put on the lift.
First things first:
Before
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After
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Cameron of Krawltex has worked on more than a few Toyotas, but when I mentioned the Tundra swap, he was eager to see what I was talking about. He knows his stuff. While I was messing with putting in bushings in the rear leafsprings, he had the coils off and on the bench.
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Here is a pic of the front with the coil/strut off
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This is where the fun starts. From reading thread after thread about the swap or even doing a spacer lift, it never seemed like compressing the coil was that big of a deal. Well, it is. Especially on the progressive rate springs. We tried the air gun and a manual spring compressor, but you couldn't get the teeth into the narrowly spaced coils enough to get them to compress, and the wider spaced coils wouldn't compress the coil enough at the top. We finally got them done with a wall mounted compressor, but this is an fyi to anyone doing a swap like this. When putting the OEM stuff on the Tundra coil, Cam had to find the sweet spot to get it to compress. Here is a pic of where it worked best;
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After getting the skid plates off, we got the diff spacers in and put the Tundra coils/struts in with the OEM top plate and one spacer from Sonoran Steel. On to the rear.
The rear is pretty straightforward. I ordered the extended brake lines and E brake bracket from Steve. Here are a few pics:
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Before the lift, I measured 35.5 inches from ground to bottom of fender in the front and 35.75 in the rear. It looks like my old springs were wearing after 40K since most people report more of a difference from front to rear. Pics:
front:[IMG][/IMG]

rear:[IMG][/IMG]

Immediately after the front was at 38 3/8, just 1/8" under 3"
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and the rear was at....39.5"...3.75" gain!

damn, I thought I had a picture..oh well...


Its already started to settle. The front is now just over 2.75" of lift and the rear is down about an 1/8" as well. I had it aligned at Firestone with my lifetime alignment, and it came back within specs. The tow was out on both sides, but that was it.
As for the ride, I love it. It is an improvement over my old stuff. For the record, my truck is not a TRD. It has the locker, and it came with progressive coils, but the shocks are just the black tokico's. I have not tried it offroad, but just over bumps and potholes it feels better.

If anyone has any questions, ask away. I didn't feel comfortable doing this lift on my own, so I am glad Krawltex was able to put this together and they let me help out and watch and learn. Great experience for me.

Final pic...at home...peeking out of the carport:
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Elton

looks great

seanathan

looks great im trying to get my dad to do the same he has an 02 double cab but his is trd and it came with the black shocks i believe they all did it had something to do with the weight so they didnt use bilstiens

AustinTaco

That's interesting. When I bought my truck, I wanted 4wd and the locker, but I didn't have to have the TRD package since I knew I would be switching stuff over later on and if I did spacer lift, I didn't want the TRD Coils. I didn't pay for TRD, but I guess, Toyota just stuck the coils and shocks on there since it had a locker. I bought the stickers for $5 and saved $1000. Thanks Toyota!

TRDPARTS4U

The truck looks great Patrick!


Jacque

pius222

lots of pics. and the truck is just sweet.

DirtyDeeds/DirtCheap

Great looking truck.

Rock Slide

iTrader: (1)

Awesome work!

Nice to see before and after pictures of a Taco getting the Tundra lift installed. So used to seeing 4Runners get this done, I tend to forget it works great on Tacos too

AustinTaco

Now I have to get the field monitor put in. That's going to be lots of fun...cutting the headliner...the point of no return.