Hi everybody, I'm trying to get information about RELIABILITY of 2nd Gen 4Runner/Hilux IFS lifted by means of the BJ spacers.

I think that a good way to figure it out is that you give your contribution by providing a brief report of:
- The components of the lift kit other than the spacers (e.g. diff drop, idler brace, manual hubs), if any.
- Height of the lift
- Measure and type of tires.
- Type of offroad use and abuse (serious, light, crawling, trails, desert, mud, etc.); % of time in 4WD offroad.
- Failures over years and miles.
- An overall opinion.

Of course, other comments are welcome but please only if based on experience, knowledge, facts.

Again, it’s only about reliability. No performance, no cost, etc.

I agree that occurred failures might be very much related to the type of wheeling or to the IFS architecture itself, but at least it will help to figure out how this lifting system compares to stock. Might be worse, or might be even better with some adopted “precautions” like braces, replacement tie rods, etc.
For example, I am a little concerned about the long bolts that keep the BJ spacers in place, or the upper control arm which has to be grinded for their installation, which could break under intensive use.

Also, nothing against Long Travel kits or SAS, but they’re simply out of the question in this thread.

I’ve already spent dozens of hours searching, searching, searching, but I couldn’t really find the subject debated in these terms; I’ve read a lot about the features, installation, shocks, pairing with rear lift, alignment. The only information that could be relevant to reliability is problems of CV axles binding and torn boots, but here as well I could seldom find useful info to figure it out if reliability is really an issue or not, or at least most of the time info is incomplete. For example, one have claimed CVs binding, and he’s been suggested diff drop, someone else said to go SAS, and many other discussions followed, but we don’t know how the story ended. Always such a pain to figure out things this way.

Thanks a lot.
Enrico

 

Balljoint spacers are a great way to lift our trucks. Cutting the control arm isn't going to weaken it any. If you have automatic hubs your going to tear through CVs because of the angle that will be on them. But switch to manual hubs and they're only moving in 4x4, and not nearly as fast. You may rip them but its a slim chance of it happening.

Personally I think the best way to lift these trucks with the stock IFS is to go with ball joint spacers, brand new torsion bars, and 2" lift rear coils or add a leafs, and of course longer shocks. Could easily fit 33x12.5 tires in there. If you need more lift do a bodylift and push that gastank up.

Also some good info in here
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...-guide-155339/

 

With just 1.5" BJ spacers, OME t-bars, OME shocks, 1" diff drop and some ZUK coils in the rear I was able easily fit some 33x12.5 BFG KM2's with no issues.

I was tearing the CV boots farily regularly before I did the diff drop, but have not had a single issue with the boots since.

 

I've had mine with bj spacers since march 2010. The downsides that I've personally had issues with are fairly simple.
-I've worn out idler arms on a fairly regular basis. The latest one has lasted the longest, due to the fact that this one has San Diego off road brass idler arm bushings. Search them on google. This particular idler has lasted a little over a year so far.

-from my experience with the spacers, aside from idler arms, they tend to put stress on the other steering components, just not as much. I've bent a few tie rods, been through one set of ball joints since installing the spacers, broke a couple of steering stops, and I need to replace the pitman arm. My recommendation, along with just about everyone else whose run this style of lift, is to make sure the moving parts of the front end are in tip top shape when you install the spacers.

-like the previous posters stated, if you don't have them,install manual hubs with these spacers. If not, you'll get fairly good at replacing cv axles. I had them on my truck before the lift, and I am very happy I did. I've got 173000 on my truck, with about 40k of that with the spacers. My OEM cv axles are still on their, and I'm planning on rebooting them in the spring.

 

Ive run the bj spacers and found the 5 hole mount holes cracked,tie rod ends wear out fast,and idler in a year or two, the steering components wear quickly when cranking torsion bars also

 

Hi, thank you very much for replies so far.

Jaronimo, were the cracked holes in the control arm, or the BJ spacer? Is the spacer cast or billet? What kind of wheeling you did to get this failure?

 

sorry to be unclear, yes the upper control starting cracking, as you need to grind out the holes edge to get the new cap bolt in, my bj spacer was made from high grade alloy flat bar

I later welded the edge after you grind the notch, did my mates also
most of my driving was very rough corrogated desert camping trips, it took 3 years to develop though, the roads mostly of gravel,sand,shale and river rock

 

i didnt have to grind my bolts at all, after removing ball joint bolts went right in, there should be little grinding if any and that should really only be for clearance of A arm but I guess it depends on Ball Joint kit you get..mine came from Toy Tech as a kit with the extra leaf and its a quality product..You HAVE to do Differential lowering and theres no way around it...the angle is to great and CV will be destroyed rather quickly without lowering the diff..Ive had no problem with any front end parts but I also replaced everything when I put the Ball joint kit on..its been couple years now and no problems...

 

That's why in my opening post I've been asking to write a series of information like lift kit setup, lift height, type of wheeling, miles/years (yep, pls see above): ALL this info COMBINED TOGETHER may help to understand the reliability of the lift method based on the "BJ spacers principle".
If one installed just the spacers and claimed a ripped boot after 4 years of hard wheeling then we may figure that the method is reliable. Viceversa, if one did many other things besides the spacers (e.g. diff drop, new axles, new tie-rods, reinforced idler) and, assuming the installation was perfect, he broke parts after 1 month/few miles of trails, then we may conclude that the mehod is bad. Or that the dude is really unlucky...
Are you with me?

Jaronimo, sorry, your problem looks weird or at least "isolated". And it does scare me, as one of the use I'd like to do with my vehicle in some future is just desert trips which will include corrugated trails.
Was the grinding that you did on the control arm the same as the others are commonly doing to install the spacer, or did you have to do something different? As 96vettelt4 wrote, you maybe had an "unusual" BJ spacers kit. Just wondering.

 

Great mod, honestly, get a bit more lift with the same ride comfort or could set it at stock height if you really wanna plush ride.. Been beatin on mine for awhile now, idler arms wear out quicker, bout a year out of em, autozones warranty takes care of that though, if you have old cv's, dont expect em to last very long either.. alignment cams get maxed out.. reliable as the toyota itself, not much to it.. never heard of any real problems with it.. had mine for a year and a half, mostly pavement driving for the past several months due to budget and disability resraints, but used to go out and have fun all the time, took it out to the desert and hauledd a$$ all weekend.. rides fairly well, even with 15 yr old shocks, soaks things up much better than before i got the spacers..

 

I only fitted a 1inch spacer,so the head of the bolt was touching the control arm.

 

Think your mistakin auto hubs for A.D.D.. With auto hubs your cv's dont spin in 2wd, But they do with a.d.d.

 

Ball joint spacers are a BAD way to lift the truck. They adversely affect steering and control arm geometry.

If you can afford to deal with the accelerated wear on things like idler arms, CV boots, joints, tires and such things, then fine- go with it.

Otherwise, they are acceptable for increasing articulation and little more.

 

Let's put it in this way: I can (hopefully) afford to build up a lift kit that is reliable. But once it's done, it has not to fail; it's my DD at least in winter, I will not be able to spend a lot of money for repairs, but moreover I'd like to use the vehicle for trips and possibly expeditions, and you know any failure in these situations is a big pain.

The aim of this thread is just to collect other experiences then I'll try to estimate if this system is reliable enough for my use or not.
Other folks that may read this in the future will do their evaluations as well.

Abecedarian, do you have practical experience that a well setup BJ spaced lift is not reliable? And what was your setup when you experienced problems? What kind of wheeling?
See, I'm not arguing, I'm really interested in your opinion.

Anyway, basing on what I found so far, I think that a setup which should set a fair level of reliability over years, miles and offroad use, might be composed of (in order of priority):

1. BJ spacers -Supplier: SDORI ( /4Crawler, I guess is the same)
2. Diff drop -Supplier: 4Crawler, …
3. Sway bar drop -Supplier: 4Crawler, …
4. Idler arm brace -Supplier: Downey, ... – PLUS - Bronze bushings -Supplier: SDORI, …
- OR -
Replacement Idler arm -Supplier: Total Chaos, Rough Road Fabrication, Autozone FA 5040 (McQuay-Norris FA5040), ...
5. New Tie rod ends & sleeves -Supplier: Beck Arnley (555), MOOG, OEM, ...
6. New Ball Joints -Supplier: Napa, MOOG, OEM, …
7. CV rebooting – Supplier: OEM, Rockford, …
- OR –
New CVs – Supplier: OEM, …
8. Control arms bushings -Supplier: Super Pro, …
9. Compression stops ??? –Supplier: Low pro, …
10. Replacement Pitman arm ??? –Supplier: …

In addition to this I would put 235/85R16 tires which are about 32x9.00” and think I’ll never go any bigger as in Italy that’s not allowed. I believe that it’ll help in terms of reliability.

Jaronimo, sorry again, do you have any pictures for what you described? If I decide to do this lift, I’ll probably fit a 1-1/4” (3 cm) spacer, so I might encounter the same problems as yours.

 

All fair and good.

My experience with BJ spacers is all of the other people here on YT who have installed them for lift and experienced issues with stressing ball joints, uneven tire wear, busting CV's and such.

If you have an eye for geometry, as in can tell the difference between a rectangle and trapezoid, you might get where I'm going.

On the stock suspension, imagine a line from the upper control arm pivot, then to the upper ball joint and to the lower ball joint, back to the lower control arm pivot and up to the upper control arm pivot, thus creating a "box".

Now, imagine making the line between the upper and lower ball joints a bit longer.

What was once pretty damned close to being a rectangle is now a trapezoid.

That means that, assuming you relax the T-bars so as to not add lift, when you stuff the wheel into the fender, it's going to camber out: \ /, and when extended, it's going to camber in / \.
If you did it solely for lift, you'll find yourself wearing out the inner edge of the tires quite quickly because it'll extend easily " / \" but wont compress "\ /".

A diff-drop could help IF it also lowers the lower control arm mounts.

 

Yes, the altered geometry was my main concern when I heard about BJ spacers the first time.
Anyway, I suppose that the effects that you described will give problems “just” to the alignment. You may agree that other failures to CVs and steering components would happen also with T-bar cranking.
As time goes and keep reading around, I’m coming to the conclusion that BJ spacers lift is not less reliable than T-bar cranking lift. Or in other words we may say that either way is less reliable than Stock, due to the steeper angles of the CVs and tie rods. It’s no way a trade-off if one wants to even the height of the rear after installing higher coils to improve the damned stock departure angle and gain some ground clearance.

Now I’m wondering if the additional parts that I listed above are worth the money to secure reliability as much as possible.

The cracked control arm reported by Jaronimo still looks an isolated occurrence, maybe he unfortunately did something wrong with the installation…