2002 SR5

Hey y'all!!! I have a 2002 Toyota Tundra SR5 3.4l. I purchased Rough Country 2.5" N3 loaded leveling struts. I got one installed on the passenger side, but the LCA is pushed all the way down and I can't compress the strut enough to straighten the lower ball joint. Recommendations?

I think I'm saying all of the right things. Idk if any of it makes sense. Help?

 

What do you mean about the lower ball joint? Lifting the suspension involves changing the angle of the balljoint. The LCA angle seems pretty steep. How steep is the UCA?

oh, its on jackstands. Sorry, missed that at a glance. Does it sit down a bit once weight is on it?

 

It looks like it’s in there? if not support the LCA, and lift the truck from the opposite corner, it will flex that side down and hopefully get you where you need to be

 

There's a slight gap here. Idk what part it is called. But it seems concerning.

 

Sway bar link won't reach. And there's also pic of drivers side

 

I would jack up the LBJ with the jack to see if you can close the angle. Use a block of wood so you don’t damage any threads on the ball joint.

It’s sort of the approach this guy uses at the 5 min mark. Although he doesn’t provide a lot of detail using a wrench for leverage.

https://youtu.be/0xnv9ChkNF4?feature=shared

 

You can’t (or shouldn’t) use stock length swaybar links with that much lift. I’ll hold my tongue about what garbage Rough Country sells.

 

Both the upper and lower balljoints are at pretty sharp angles...

When I put a lift spring on the front of my Tacoma, it took out the compressed angle the upper ball joint had been at because of the old worn springs. In my experience a small lift will straighten out a compressed ball joint. I wouldn't expect it to force it into those angles.

I don't know enough about lifts to know what to expect, but I agree both your ball joints are at extreme angles.

This is unrelated, but when did the lower joint get replaced last? That bottom nut should have a castle nut and cotter pin. I don't see one.

Cotter pin



Angle of upper ball joint

 

Looks like top of your knuckle is hooked on the coil spring.

 

Yeah the top one definitely scraped up the spring. For sure.

I thought this was going to be fairly simple project. Tough of course because you're stretching a 20+y.o something into an additional almost 3inches. But mostly simple.

The vehicle is newly purchased. Have been trying to replace what I can when I can.

Honestly not sure about when anything was repaired last. I know the front suspension was because the struts that came out were not stock. They were after Markey.

Just a girl and her truck

 

Is the other side on the ground or on jack stands?

 

All 4s are on the ground. I justhave them stored underneath until the morning.

I have to figure our the proper bleeding process for my Jack because I couldn't seem to figure it out.

 

Yeah good eye, maybe. Hard to tell from the photo. IS the upper ball joint caught under one of the coils of the coil spring?? Kinda looks like it. Especially in the second photo. There's definitely contact, and it might actually be hung up, under pressure.

 

No it's not touching. There's only a centimeter clearance though roughly. Which is also concerning. Lol

 

It should settle a bit after a day or so with weight on it.

 

Looping back to this now I'm off a small screen.

First off, if you're trying to install new struts with the wheel on, you're doing yourself a massive disservice because you're loading up the knuckle with a shitload of extra weight it doesn't want or need in this situation.

Ideal case, and maybe a sanity check for you, but your install should be something like this ...:

• Remove the top nut of your swaybar link in prep for for bullet #5
• Crack lugnuts loose
• Floor jack truck and properly support it
• Remove your wheel
• Remove the swaybar link (or leave it hanging)
• Place the bottle jack from your truck under your LCA just to the point it supports it
• Remove lower strut bolt
• Temporarily drop and move OEM bottle jack from LCA
• Remove three bolts at top of strut, tap coil to drop out OEM strut/spring
• Slide new strut in, hand-tighten three nuts, don't torque yet - you may need to really stomp on the LCA to get enough mov't to get things lined up to the LCA mount
• If not enough articulation, stop, and I personally prefer popping off the upper balljoint myself, but popping the cotter/castle on the lower and pressing its spindle out of the LCA works too
• Install lower strut mount bolt with the bolt head facing rear of the truck, nut facing front of the truck, don't torque yet
• Use your bottle jack under the LCA to lift/line things up if needed, to get the LBJ or UBJ spindle reinstalled and help and ... if you're going to reinstall the too-short swaybar links, you may as well do it now... tighten things, but again, don't torque yet
• Everything should look good at this point, ready for wheel reinstall, which you can do with the bottle jack under the LCA
• Remove bottle jack, remove proper support, remove floor jack
• Torque to spec, "feels tight" isn't good enough, use a damn torque wrench:
  • Lug nuts to 85lbft
  • See picture below for other specs from 2003 FSM, NOTE: Only the last number shown in (parenthesis) is lbft! Like, three top nuts are 47lbft, not 64 or 650!
  • For the top nut on the swaybar link, you only want to tighten to the point the washers are barely starting to bulge the bushings
• Pat yourself on the back, but read the following warnings:

You need to be aware there is a massive issue with catastrophic failure of aftermarket lower ball joints (and their 4 mounting bolts) on these trucks, specifically, due to Toyota's choice to put so much load on the LBJ in this design. Your lower ball joints should be replaced with OEM units every 100-125k miles, proactively. This is not a joke. This is not some asshole on the internet being a parts snob. We have a gallery with dozens of people who failed to heed this warning, and there are hundreds or thousands of pictures on the Facebook group for 1st gen Tundras, all people who failed to listen to that advice and this next advice...

Any time you are replacing with OEM LBJ, you should use fresh bolts, ideally OEM, and make sure you pick the correct bolts. There's a sticky thread here on that topic. Different bolts have different finishes (black/natural/shiny/flat/etc.) and the different finishes typically have diff't torque specs. Anyone here on the forum can help, just post in the sticky thread. A lot of shops and shadetree mechs will use red Loctite on the four LBJ mounting bolts. You should use some kind of thread sealant, I personally use blue for easier service later, then I use a paint pen to mark my bolt positions on the LBJ for easy inspection later.

DO NOT believe anyone who tries to tell you "Moog is great!", especially older dudes like me. Moog used to be a great company, they don't make their own parts anymore, they haven't for about two decades, and most of their part quality is shit these days. We older folk are loyal as shit, to a fault.

​

 

It almost looks as if there are scrapes on the spring where the LCA touches, which I think @MT-Tundra was noticing also.

Once again, I'll bite my tongue about Rough Country's products for these trucks and the nightmares they've caused for others, but I'll say, the angle of the UBJ in the pic he marked up with red is concerning, and proximity of knuckle to coil spring is concerning. They shouldn't be able to touch at full extension or full compression. Metal on metal is never good.

Typically once you get at or above the 2.5" of lift range, you need to be replacing other stuff on these trucks to allow for proper articulation (i.e. extended swaybar links), to avoid damage, and make alignments easier to dial-in (i.e. aftermarket upper control arms).

Be careful with your wheel and tire choice. Specifically choosing the right offset to give you reasonable backspacing. We've compiled a lot of that info in the "Suspension, wheel and tires ..." of this thread: https://www.tundras.com/threads/so-you-wanna-buy-just-bought-a-1st-gen-tundra-eh.115928/