I was looking at the rear suspension of my 4Runner the other day while parks in the driveway with the sway bars off and one of the rear wheels in a bit of a dip. The upper link on the 4 link rear is sitting right on the lip of the gas tank skid plate. Looks like it might have even bent it a little bit. has anyone esle that has lifted their 4Runner run into this problem?

My rear end is lifted on cruiser coil, but I'd think other would have the same problem if lifter the same amount.

 

the control arms bent the skid plate a little on mine too, doesnt hurt anything.

 

I'm going to look into cutting that part out and raising the tank......I looked the other day and thought it would be easy to do at first, but looks like it might be harder than I thought. There will be issues with other things

My uncle (who owns his own very successful shop) said that I need to extend my links like you did. I'm just going to make my own links. Probably do the upper links with heim joints and just extend the lower ones. Do you think that will work?

 

Raising the tank and keeping the stock passenger upper link is going to be a lot of work for a little gain.

I have bent, hammered and ground where it hits and get a ton of flex with the stock mount and gas tank in the stock location.

For probably 200 bucks, you can run Rancho 5009's, a panhard drop and cruiser coils plus have money for a longer brake line and the flex will be pretty mind boggling.

 

I was looking at raising the tank also. On a 2nd Gen this would be a major major project for little gain like Adrian said. The 1st Gen Runners have a slightly differnt mounting method for the tank that would make raising it a good bit easier.

I'm going status quo until I can swap in a Pathfinder tank between the rear frame rails and make a serious 4 link setup. However, this may happen when donkey's fly...

For a "bolt-on" setup, what Adrian is running is the best setup IMO.

 

Whos rig are you talking about? Pictures would be nice.

 

Adrian=Flygtenstein

I don't know if he has pics of his setup, but there are plenty of pics of him working the suspension in CO.

 

Gotcha......I plan on in the long run doing alot with my runner slowly of course. I was just looking for a fast fix for this problem since it's going to be back on the road hopefully pretty soon. I guess Adrains way is best for now.

Later I plan on moving it back where the spare use to be though. Take that cross member out and boxing it back in closer to the bumper. Then moving both upper and lower link farther forward where they need to be on a lifted vehicle. Them at some point put a 4 link SAS or a long travel kit on it. That will all be after the supercharger and locking at least the rear.

Big plans I guess........lots fo time to do it though. I'd be curious to hear more about this Pathfinder tank though. Is that basically what I'm taling about doing with my fuel tank and using a Nissan Pathfinder tank?

 

did you put a panhard drop bracket on?

I noticed that my upper link gets close to my gas tank when I am at full flex.

 

I have a panhard lift bracket that I made.....it lifts the panhard up from the axle and solve the problem with the LSPV. I know that Adrian used a drop bracket for his panhard and a turnbuckle for his LSPV. Either way it works, but I'd say that you need one or the other. I've done a few lifts on other vehicles and they all relocated the panhard bar in some form. I've seen some kits the just move the panhard over about an inch on a 3" lift. Serves the same purpose, but I'd go with a lift or drop bracket.

Also, the bracket isn't going to stop the links from getting close to the tank, but will put the axle where it needs to be.

 

i made a custom gas tank to get rid of several problems like driveshaft/control arm interference, and because it just hangs down so darn low. I havent installed it yet since i havent had the time to modify the stock fuel pump to accomidate the new gas tank geometry (low profile and large area instead of the tall narrow stock tank). To get around having to modify the fuel pump im going to try and fit the gas tank from the parts car supra i bought in there. If the fuel lines and sensors arent a hard swap over it might be a nice and easy fix for anyone that wants to move the gas tank to the rear. The supra tank is made to go under the trunk and should already be fairly low profile.