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Need Advice on 3rd Gen Tacoma Lift Setup

Jonas

Jonas

2️⃣ Bronze
Hey guys, looking for recommendations on a good 2–3” lift setup for a daily-driven 3rd gen Tacoma that also sees light trails. Mainly want good ride quality and minimal rubbing. What suspension/tire setups are you running?
 
My Bilstein 5100's are plenty for light off roading! I had a Toytec full coilover for about 60k miles and swapped to the 5100's last october. I daily drive my tacoma 300+ miles a week. Super smooth on the highway. Recommend doing the ECGS bushing in the front diff while you are in there for peace of mind.

5100's set to 3rd notch, 1" lift block in the rear. Falken Wildpeak AT4 265/70/17's.
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Bottman said:
How much do you want to spend?
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That is the real question I didn't ask. Sky's the limit really.

5100 are budget minded. I got my fronts on super sale for less than $300. You figure another $200-250 for rears. It's a pretty versatile set up for sub $600. That's if you are willing to do the work. Great thing about 5100 is you keep the stock springs.
 
This is a slippery slope and on these trucks it's a lot more involved than you'd expect, but for daily driving I wouldn't do a 3" lift. The wheel gap looks great, but anything higher than about 1.75" up front makes it ride like absolute crap because you lose all your downtravel (ask me how I know). Having adjustable coilovers up front is crucial for finding the best lift to ride quality balance that works for you, and unless you are running a bunch of armor up front switching to a 650lb front spring rides a lot nicer than the factory 700's. And if you get nice correctly valved shocks, you can ditch the sway bar and not have it feel sketchy.

IMO do a lift under 2" and then upsize the tires to get the 3" you want. Then you'll need a tune if you are automatic because the truck will shift all over the place with bigger tires, and you'll likely need a cab mount chop depending on tire size and wheel offset.
 
Yeah that honestly sounds like the sweet spot for what I’m after. I’m trying to stay around the $1k–$1.5k range for suspension before tires, so the Bilstein 5100 route is sounding more and more appealing compared to jumping straight into expensive coilovers.
I mostly daily drive the truck (300 plus highway miles some weeks myself) with occasional light trails and camping trips, so ride quality matters more to me than max articulation. The 5100s on the 3rd notch with the 1” rear block and 265/70/17 Falken Wildpeaks honestly sounds like a really balanced setup with minimal rubbing/headaches.
Good call on the ECGS bushing too I keep hearing about the needle bearing issue on these trucks, so doing it while everything is apart makes sense for peace of mind. Appreciate the detailed breakdown.
 
Jonas said:
Yeah that honestly sounds like the sweet spot for what I’m after. I’m trying to stay around the $1k–$1.5k range for suspension before tires, so the Bilstein 5100 route is sounding more and more appealing compared to jumping straight into expensive coilovers.
I mostly daily drive the truck (300 plus highway miles some weeks myself) with occasional light trails and camping trips, so ride quality matters more to me than max articulation. The 5100s on the 3rd notch with the 1” rear block and 265/70/17 Falken Wildpeaks honestly sounds like a really balanced setup with minimal rubbing/headaches.
Good call on the ECGS bushing too I keep hearing about the needle bearing issue on these trucks, so doing it while everything is apart makes sense for peace of mind. Appreciate the detailed breakdown.
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Good thing about that tire size, is you can run them with stock suspension. I ran my wheels/tires for about a month. Only rubbing I encountered was the front mudflap. I just removed them.
 
New to this forum so my 2 cents, 2023 TRD sport. I put 6112's front set on highest clip setting and 5100's rear with 1 1/2 AAL's from Headstrong and it sits perfect for me with 285/70/17 Mickey Thompson Baja A/Ts. Went and got it aligned and just didn't feel/handle as good as it could (caster only @ 1 1/2 and 2) so then put some high caster UCAs on it , realigned, got caster to 4/ 4.25 and camber to 0 and .25 , could not ask for a better ride with this combo.
 
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