I went up to Slee Offroad this morning to pick up my rear leaf springs (OME CS009R, the first step in my lift!!!) and got to talking with Ben for a little while about my plans. I mentioned that I'm planning on doing balljoint spacers to take care of the front, and he cautioned against them rather strongly, saying that they can lead to all kinds of funky handling in street and slippery conditions because they push the steering upward or something. I'm not real familiar with our steering systems so I'm not 100% sure what he meant, but it sounded reasonable. His take on the fact that everyone on the boards says they're great is that often they are on semi-dedicated offroad trucks or people have no idea what a "good" ride actually is when comparing their ride with the spacers to anything else.

Not that I don't think he knows what he's talking about, but this is the first time I've heard of BJ spacers causing problems like that on street-driven trucks. I know lots of folks here are running them currently and I wanted to get some personal anecdotes on that experience and some opinions on if I should go that route or not. The thing is, I need the front to match the back (levelled with an inch or two of lift) and don't want to do a bracket lift or crank the **** out of my t-bars, so the BJ spacers appear to be my best/only real option.

What is y'all's take on this?

 

Theyre fine on the street. I never had any problems with corky steering or anything.

Going off road you run into steering problems but it all depends on your t-bar placement.

 

What did he suggest? Mine is a DD and I take it offroad all the time and not just local crap either. My idler arm bushings wear out faster, but that will happen with a tbar crank, idler arm brace, and 33's also. The longest trip was from CA to Northern MN with wheeling in MN and then a week in CO all the while towing my M416 trailer. The only time I had problems getting it aligned was when my idler arm bushings were shot and one of my alignment cams were stripped.

I'm really interested in hearing what he suggested you do for the front end, since all the options out there will cause you to wear out your steering components faster especially if you add bigger tires.

 

I drive my truck back and forth to work everyday (70 mile round trip commute), and I wheel it also with the ball joint spacers. No funky steering issues at all with my ball joint spacers.

 

The spacers are extremely street-able. I designed them and have been running them since '03 for thousands and thousands of miles. I personally think the on road ride is improved with them. I can't fathom tying the ball joint spacers to wet weather handling good or bad. That just makes no sense.

If I had to guess either he is going off of something he heard about a different brand of vehicle or just thinks you'll buy a lift kit from someone else since he doesn't carry the spacers. If you like the OME stuff, check out www.trdparts4u.com. Our spacers work well with the OME kit. www.toyteclifts.com and www.4crawler.com also carry our stuff and can make kits.

Frank

 

No issues with the spacers in bad weather...

Robb

 

I have them on my DD and I love them no probs at all I recommend them

 

I live in a freakin rainforest...(western BC) and have NO problems with wet handling.... how would that even make sense? I mean your ball joint isnt going to affect anything to do with road slipperyness.

 

Maybe if you didn't align the truck afterwards, you'd experience bad handling, but you aren't changing anything that would result in a change of handling really.

 

Take the word of people that have them... They are completely transparent on the street.

He probably just doesn't know anything about them and is talking to you out of his ass. They're no more unpredictable than cranking up your tbars when it comes to handling.

 

My local off road store was pretty wary of them. I don't think they knew much about them at all though.

 

I have had the BJ spacers for a week now and no problems.

 

i have BJ spacers on my xterra
the only issue was getting an alignment, had to have a buddy do it at his shop

 

There are no normal driving conditions that pose a problem. I've driven mine on the street, highway and 4wheeling with no problems. You may notice some cv joint binding on hard turns in 4 Wheel Drive if you don't do a diff drop and you have your TB's cranked up. The only other issue is the tie rod arms go up at more of an angle, this can cause wear on the idler arm and bushings (as mentioned).

I wish someone would make a steering and idler drop arm for the 89-95 so the main link and the tie rod arm were more inline with each other with BJ spacers installed. This would help prevent bending arms and un-even pressure on the IA bushings.