I recently (past month) purchased a ToyTech BJ 2" BJ spacer lift. I looked at alot of write-ups on this site as well as others. Also had the instructions the lift came with. Everything was pretty straight foreward. Except for a couple of things.

#1. Lifting the front-end.
It seemed simple enough. I also checked out Djlarroc's write up, https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...riteup-145471/, and found that I was suppost to lift it a certain way. But even lifting the front end that way wasn't enough. I had to replace the wheels and everything because I didn't have enough room to squeeze an angle grinder, less the spacer inbetween the balljoint and UCA. So I put jackstands on either side of the frame about 2 feet behind the front rotors.

#2. Block in-between bumpstop?
The instructions said to put a block inbetween the bumpstop, as did alot of the write-ups. This did absolutely nothing.

#3. Grinding/Spacer
I couldn't even get the balljoint out from underneith the UCA. I thought to myself, "How the hell am I suppost to squeeze the grinder in-between the balljoint and UCA?". The answer came to me after an hour of staring at it. I had to get the following items: 2 foot long piece of steel pipe, 6 inch long 2x6, and floor jack. Then I placed the block on the floor jack, as to not let the pipe slip, and placed the piece of pipe on top of the block, under the UCA, and inbetween the steering components and sway bar. (The pipe had to be about 1 inch in diameter due to the very small space.) And crank that S.O.B. UCA up. The first attempt I failed misserably, as the pipe slipped and flew out at a thousand MPH. The next time I was more carefull, and jacked the UCA three inches up. I finally had some room to grind. However, this was so dangerous, that, had the pipe slipped again, I probably wouldn't be here today to talk about it.

Heres a pic, see the pipe of the left of the rotor.


#4. Positioning BJ
How was I suppost to hold the rotor up, position the balljoint underneith the UCA with the spacer on top, AND put the bolts underneith it all by myself?? The write-ups said it was possible to do with one person. I highly, extemely, absolutely doubt that. I had to inquire the help of my younger brother to get that S.O.B. in there.

Overall, I hope that somebody will someday do a good, accurate write up in the future. And hopefully some of my experience here helps others.

Also, if anybody has some information or experience in this and thinks they know if I did something wrong, please tell me. I would dearly like to know how this could have been easier.

 

It's possible solo. Just a PITA.

 

correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that if done correctly with the right size block of wood, it keeps you from having to do this...

 

i dont remember having issues when i did my BJ spacers.....

 

I just did mine and the first side took me about two hours. The second side took about thirty minutes. Yeah it was a pain but I think your average mechanically inclined noob could handle it!

 

X2...

 

thats excactly what i thought. didnt work at all.

 

...so you are calling me an average mechanically inclined noob.

 

Ha no I am sorry for the mis understanding.

I sort of just jumped into mine with out really reading anything. I found that using the block of wood helped but it was still a pain. The UCA is really hard to move.

 

maybe yours was easier because its a first gen, mines a second gen.

yeah, when i tried jacking it up with the pipe it went up about 1.5 inches then started lifting the entire truck, but i kept cranking the crap out of it and eventually it got about 3 inches of room.

 

can you post a pic of the final stance of your truck? also (off topic) are your shocks super stiff? I have the same ones and they are def stiff.

 

yes because they arent long enough. im planning to get some bilsteins when i get the money. first i need 33 12.5s though. and new rims.

Before


After

 

I took my upper arms off. I am doing a frame up build, though. It was very easy to assemble with the torsion bars out, maybe if the bars were relaxed it would be easier.

 

doubt it. they were relaxed pretty good. besides, taking the UCA off would be the biggest pain ever. worse than a body lift... ugh...

 

good point, and a fine idea if I do say so myself

I mean, it's not like you have to worry about screwing up the alignment... that'll have to be done anyway...

 

Once the T bars are off, and the ball joint is detached, three bolts take off the upper arm.

 

Or you could no tried to kill yourself and taken the torsion bars off and the UCA's off and done it on the bench.

I used a piece of wood, not a block to jack the upper UCA after un-torquing the Torsions (as opposed to what i just said, taking them completely off) The UCA has it's own pre-load but it'll move easily if you take down force off them by the Torsions.

The writeups are accurate IMO. I didn't have any issues doing mine a few years ago.

with any mechanical undertaking, expect the unexpected. Expect it to take longer than it should. Expect to find problems while fixing a problem. Don't expect a writeup to have all the answers.... Gotta think outside the box and just go with the flow.

 

Wow, that was really dangerous. There are many writeups on this.

I did it by myself and so have many others. Like said before the first one took awhile and the second one was a breeze.

I jacked up the one side removed the tire and put a jackstand under the front crossmember.

To get the upper arm up, I first put a floor jack right under the bottom balljoint and jacked it up till the arm no longer went up and started lifting the 4runner off the jack stand.

Then I took the stock bottlejack and put it upside down between the upper arm and the top of the bottom bumpstop mount. I used that to crank the arm up off the balljoint. This will get it up plenty high to put a block in there.

Cut the stuff out. I have a 4.5" angle grinder which doesn't fit in there too well, so I put a 4" wheel on it which fit much better.

Put the spacer on, pull the block, and start cranking the bottle jack down slowly and guide it onto the bjspacer and bolts.

Remember the bottle jack trick because you will need it if you ever have to change a cv while you have bjspacers.

 

I love BJs...

BOTTLE JACKS yall... get yer mind outta the gutter...

they come in handy a lot, like this for instance, or widening the rear LCA mounts to stock position, or using it as dead weight to hit on a wrench to break a rusty bolt loose (that's usually how I use mine 300k on a truck, you gotta use tricks like that for the stubborn things)



sorry, off topic, I know...

 

yeah your all talk and a whole lot of doing nothing. you make it sound so easy when its really not. "just go with the flow"?! i was just making a point of how much i struggled to do this seemingly "simple" lift and give some other people some pointers on the things that i had to figure out on my own.