AFE 1.875 inch Level Kit

So I added the AFE 1.875 inch level kit to the front of my 2023 Tundra Platinum, which has the basic black Hitachi shocks. I measured center of hub to fender at 21.5 inches before I began. Much to my surprise when I was done after a drive to let it level out, I was at 24.5 inches or plus 3 inches??? Tire camber was positive or top out on both sides. I maxed out the camber adjustment just to see what that would do and it came down a quarter of an inch to about 24.25, so now I am up 2.75 or 7/8 more than expected and there is still a slightly positive camber or at least appears to be by eyeballing it. Rear is 23.5 inches so I am front high.

Any ideas, I have watched several videos and looked at the install instructions for multiple level kits to see if there was anything that could have resulted in this, with no luck.

The AFE puck is only 1.5 inch thick, so how could it possibly added 2.75 inches of lift... it drives fine, just too high so I am concerned about the axle angle.

 

On the front of these Gen 3 trucks you will get roughly 1.00" inches of lift after a proper alignment for every .500" of spacer/shim. The rear is more of a 1:1 ratio. I put a .500" shim on my TRD Pro and it bumped my height a fraction under 1.00" after alignment.

Here is a helpful video where they ran into a similar situation as you did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L3bMDRVSx4

 

Sounds right to me.

 

This is called motion ratio - the amount the shock moves compared to how much the wheel and tire travel. On the gen2’s it was about 1.7 to 1; I don’t recall offhand what gen3 is but I think it’s similar.

The lower control arm is a big pivot arm: one side mounts fixed to the frame, the tire and wheel are mounted to the other end which is allowed to move up and down. The coilover shock and spring are mounted somewhere in the middle. As the free end (tire and wheel) move up and down, the shock also moves up and down, but at a reduced rate. If, for example, the shock was mounted exactly in the middle of the LCA, it’s ratio would be 2:1 and the tire would move twice as far as the coilover since it is two times the distance from the fixed pivot point. Alternately, the coilover only moves half as far as the tire since it is half as far away from the pivot point.

So, yes, adding a 1.75” spacer to the coilover will yield more than 1.75” of wheel lift. 2.75-3” sounds about right.

 

This video was super helpful. Wish I had seen it before buying the AFE spacer. I would have and now will buy a shorter spacer since this video shows how big a difference there is. I still think it is odd that they claim 1.875 of lift yet I got 2.75, but this video clearly shows all the spacer kits are giving a lot more than the claimed lift.

It does make me wonder if they tested with the trd off road shocks and the amount of lift differs with the different shocks because I watched a few videos where they got closer to the claimed lift, but those where on trucks with the bilstein shocks.