Bulldog Yota and I both have Daystar spacers and have wheeled them pretty hard. I'm confident we've both taken through the limits of stock suspension travel many times with no problems whatsoever.

I do not like the relocs because they are not solving any problems, and you are more likely to cause damage to the shock w/ relocs than without. JMO on them, which is one of many reasons I never got them.
The manufacturing of the actual product isn't the problem, it's the design of it. A machine shop will make whatever you want them to make- whether it is a flawed design or not is not their responsibility.

IMO, since it is not a big deal to change things, why not pull the relocs and use the OEM bolt/location until you decide. There is no sense in feeling uncomfortable or risking blown shocks-- that is at least a $1500 gamble and possibly your safety.

 

4run4fun, you might want to check out this thread.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/showth...3919#post73919

A guy that used to work for SAW has chipped in and picked up onm something that we all seemed to have missed. He was asking whether the shock angle remains the same after the reloc, it seems to not be the case. We all assumed because it was mounted so close that it would be but maybe it isn't.

 

Okay, back home and I've taken a look. My shocks are not leaking at all, however the rubber bushing on the bottom end shows a little compression pinch on the front side. This seems to be attributable to the mount angle varience mentioned by bulldog and in the T4R thread. While the difference in angle is slight, the explanation of the potential stress on the shaft makes some sense (although it looks like the bushing has in essence compensated for it).





Given all of the dirt I have seen from NE and the pinch I am seeing, I think I will drop em back to stock before anything else shows up.

While I may be willing to ditch the XREAS in the future in favor of coilovers, etc., I would rather not be forced into an unplanned for expense.

 

If you are running the Daystar lift, 4run4fun, definitely just return the shocks to their stock mounting position. As I stated in another thread, I too noticed the different angle of the two (as you can also plainly see in the pictures on the NE website) and brought it up to AK, who said it was a non-issue and wouldn't hurt a thing.

 

However slight the variation of angle is, keep in mind that the distance measured off the original line between the two shock mounts will increase the further away a measurement is taken from the bottom shock mount. I was always wondering why the bottom of the shock was so beat up and/or spray-painted. Maybe because they had to beat the thing on with a hammer to overcome the change of angle.

 

That lower bushing angle is totally wrong. I think I see what has happend here. Same thing that happened to me in 2001 with the FZJ-80 rear shocks. Drop was great, but the drive shaft hit the gas tank, and at full compression I over compressed the shocks and the seals blew out and leaked oil. To fix this I came up with the droped bumpstops. In the end I could not get the FJ shocks to work correclty. I went back to a 4Runner shock.

Same thing here, although the lower angle of that bushing is not so hot, the shocks were more than likey over comressed, blew the seals and are now leaking.

If you move the lower mount up, you need to move the upper mount as well or get a shock with a shorter compression number.

All in all, this did not work for me in 2001 and it's not going to work for Tony Baloney in 2005. Droping the bumpstops would help but then you will so little up travel left, what will be left in the end will be worhtless.

So the 3rd Gen rear bumo stops I originally built, I threw away the original adapters and made some new ones that just swaped out the crummy stock bumpers with the nice poly ones.

 

Actually, moving the shock onto the reloc spindle was easy and did not require any pounding, etc.

 

Okay, I have removed the relocs and gone back to the stock mounts. In the process I discovered that the upper end of the inner shock tube has some significant wear marks.

Driver side:



Passenger side:



This would obviously result in something more serious over time. It would seem that a higher lift would also compound the problem.

Thanks to this thread, perhaps I can avoid having to replace my shocks in the near future.

 

eeeks. I'm glad you took them off, 4run4fun. It looks like the angle was causing the bottom part of the shock to slide up hard against the top half on that one side. Yours look dry though, so that's a definite plus.

 

I'm glad to see you took off the relocs. Hopefully others will follow.

 

Awesome photos that really highlight what might be a very serious cause of shock breakdown.

This has been a most enlightening thread, one I suspect has some miles to run yet.

I wonder how many owners are running around with this problem and don't know it yet

 

You wouldn't know it unless you drop the shocks. I could not see these wear marks before doing so.

 

Here's the photo I was talking about, posted by Lemke on t4r,org, he says its a photo he collected, but isn't his runner. Maybe the shock damage was caused by wheeling, but I thought perhaps it's installation was "persuaded" with a hammer.

 

I think most people had to hammer/rubber mallet them on.

 

My old man & brother have Lexus LS470's and those things have air/gas what ever shocks. Anyone look into if that or the FZJ has the same shock system, I'm willing to bet the LX/FZJ has a good 2-3" longer shock stock.

 

AT least one XREAS system has been saved from the relocs from hell, the Daystar lift with XREAS still gives lots of flex. SO you will be fine till the mod bug bites again

BTW Firsttoy and I took some pics today and measured the flex front and rear of the XREAS with Daystar lift. I took off my front swaybar (yeah Lance I know ) and get 8" of flex in the front now, and the rear has 13" of flex, not bad for an essential stock system without "killer" relocs. They sure are killer, killing XREAS (WIth the front swaybar the front flexes 3" less!!, so it is very stiff as we all know) WIl do a different thread on that, as it is the starting point to see what we can get out of these.

 

Sorry to hear about the damage that's occuring. I guess I'm a lucky one today as AK never got around to sending me a re-loc.

 

I'll send ya a set!

I'm trying to figure out what to do with them now. They cost me a pretty penny. Toilet roll holders perhaps??? This may be one use where they wouldn't damage anything.

 

I'll send you a set too, YAMAman.

4run4fun ... be careful, if you use them as toilet roll holders they might bend the wall mounts.

 

Great, looks like I have my work cut out for me this weekend..