I don't have a Tacoma, but my bro Timmy does and after a year of watchin me tweak the hell outta my rig he finally decided to do something about it:

Not a bad choice!  Donahoe coilovers, Camburg Uniball upper A arms,  Deaver progressive 3 leaf add-a-leafs, and 8 1/2" Bilstein 5150s courtesy of DeMello Offroad.  Since This was quite similar to my first lift, it was gonna be fun installing these goodies on a Tacoma.  Before you go any further, get some masking tape and put a piece on each wheel well.  Now measure the distance from each wheel center to the wheel well.  Write it on the piece of tape.  This distance is will serve as your baseline measurement to gauge the amount of lift you get after the install is done and will let you know where you need to make any adjustments. Now use some PB Blaster or a similar product and douse all the bolts on the front suspension that you will be removing.  It will make your life easier!  

The first thing to deal with is making room to remove the long bolts for the upper A arms. 

Passenger Side
A- Air conditioner line
B- Air bag sensor

Drivers Side
A- Battery cable (+)
B- Air bag sensor

As you can see, as it sits these bolts will not have enough room for removal.  We broke down the battery (a very good idea whenever you muck around with the airbag sensors) and the air intake box.  With these out of the way it was easy to make the room needed.

    

The sensors are held in place by a couple 10mm bolts.  On the passenger side, the AC line needs to be moved.  There is a single bolt you need to remove and a bracket that you need to snap the line out of.  Once you do that there is enough room.  On the Drivers side the air bag sensor is similar to the pass side.  The battery cable is held in place by a bolt, but it is blocked by the cable so you have to use a box wrench.  The bolts now have ample room for removal. 

Next it was time to breakdown the stock ball joints from the A arm.  A puller works great here, but we used a pickle fork.  A BFH will also get the job done.  Quick work with a 19mm ratchet and the upper A arms were off.

Now comes the most difficult part- removing the stock ball joints.  To do this you have to remove the C clip.  Standard snap ring pliers can help start to move the clips, but wont let you complete the job. Here is where having an extra set of hands is nice.  While I worked the pliers, Timmy used a flat head screw driver to get one end of the clip out of the groove.  Once you get that done, it is just a matter of time to work the clip out using the screw driver.  With the clip out you can now press out the ball joint.  Here is where we ran into problems.  My ball joint press works great on my D44 ball joints, but not on the Toyota ones.  This was due to the fact the the spacers are not the correct diameter and the limited room in which to work.  So I had to get creative and fabricate some spacers.  I did this by using a 1 5/16" socket (1" drive) and some 1/4" thick bar stock.  Since the bottom of my press is open I made a bottom plate with a circular insert welded in so that we could get right next to the spindle (the ones that came with the press wouldn't let us get close enough).  Next I drilled a 3/4" hole in a piece of bar so that it would fit over the top of the BJ and rest on the BJ body.  We did have to remove the arm seat on the BJ so that the bar would sit all the way down.  This gave the socket a nice firm place to sit.  Then another piece of 1/4" bar served as a topper for the socket.  After a few failed attempts we finally got everything lined up straight, and we popped those buggers out.  Pressing in the new slug was somewhat easier, but it did want to go crooked if the press was not aligned well.  You can see how happy Timmy was when the job was done! Getting the clips back on was super difficult.  We ended up using the snap rings off of some spare D44 lower ball joints (they fit perfect!)

Pressing the stock BJ out.  I am actually done here and am just holding everything together so that it doesn't go flying

   

   Pressing the new slug in

Next comes the time to put the Camburg Arms on.  Because they use polyurethane bushings, you got to lube them up or else you'll get the wonderful squeeeek that will drive you nuts!  Install the grease zerks supplied. The grease that is supplied with the kit is really tacky and does not rub off easily. Lube up the inside diameter of the bushings really well and then press in the sleeves.  Next lube up the outer ends of the inside bushings and get the washers ready.  If you lube the outside at this point, the grease is going to get all over and is a bitch to clean up.  The arms fit tight on the support bracket- we had to wedge the washer in at an angle to get it on.  Once they are seated, grease up the outside and hold the washer in place so that you can slide the bolt in from the front.  A spare set of hands is nice here as well.  Because of the space limitation you cant just put the washer on the bolt and slide it on, the washer has to sit on the bushing.  Grease up the last side, put the washer on and put the nut back on.  Note that the nut should be on the rear side.  Before you torque that pup down, fit the uniball into the slug and put in the upper slug/bolt combo.  Here is a comparison of the stock set up and the uniball set up

  

Now its time to put the Donahoes in.  This is the easiest part of the whole process.  First insert the top into the upper bucket so that the DR logo and valve is facing out.  Line up the appropriate hole in the bucket and use the grade 8 hardware provided.  We found that using a little mirror was a big help to get the last bolts in.

Getting the bottom bolt on is only slightly difficult because you have to pry the lower arm down a little bit so that the bolt holes line up.  If you use the new A arm as a leverage point, be sure to use some protection so you don't scratch those new arms!!!

Next we turned our attention to the AALs.  PB Blaster the U bolts and shackle nuts.  Position your jack under the axle so that the leafs are just slightly sprung.  Working on one side at a time, break down the shock and the U bolts.

      

Using the jack, carefully lower the axle so that the leaf springs pop off of the perch.  Next break down the shackles and the front hanger bolt.  Be careful when you remove the shackles as the springs will be free to swing down.

Now break down the center pin on the stock leafs.  A set of vicegrips will be needed to keep the pin from spinning.  Then break down the AALs: the long center pin and the wrap bolts.  

 

Fish the long centering pin that the AALs come with thru the center holes and using a big C clamp, press the leafs together and wrench the bolt on the pin.  When we were breaking down one of the AALs the long pin cross-threaded on us and it was a bitch getting it off.  Luckily, the stock pin is still long enough to use as the overload leaf is replaced with the 3 leafs.  A big plus with these AALs is that you don't have to grind off the stock wraps. Replace the leafs in the correct orientation and reinstall the shackles.  Now is a good time to lube up the shackle bushings with some lithium grease.

   

To get the bumpstop back on you need to cut the long center pin down.  A hack saw or an angle grinder will do the trick.  Put the Ubolts back on and you are ready to tackle the other side after you put a jackstand under the axle side you just got done working on.  We ran into a problem with the Bilsteins as they did not have the correct bushings.  Luckily Timmy had some long shocks on there already so as soon as the new bushings come in we can swap them out easily.

The last step was to replace the rear brake line with the braided stainless steel one that came with the kit.

A quick bleed of the brake system with my powerbleeder and he was good to go!  Over all it took us 2 days to do this, but we started in the evening and the setback with the pressing took up most of that time.  If you had the right press set up you could easily do this in an afternoon.

Torque Specs:

Upper Control Arm Bolt

72 Ft-lbs

Upper Coilover Bolts

47 Ft-lbs

Lower Coilover Bolt

100 Ft-lbs

Uniball Bolt

80 Ft-lbs

Shackle Bolts

125 Ft-lbs

Hanger Bolt

125 Ft-lbs

U bolts

100 Ft-lbs

Upper Shock bolt

50 Ft-lbs

Lower Shock Bolts

65 Ft-lbs

Leaf center pin bolt

50 Ft-lbs


 

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Last modified: February 17, 2005