When do I NEED to upgrade my suspension?

This is an ongoing discussion for my truck and plans, so I appreciate everyone’s constant feedback so far. Budgeting for suspension is proving extremely daunting and basically doubling my expected expenses, so I wanted to ask about it more so from another angle…

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I’m building out my 05’ Tundra V8 4x4 with a (relatively speaking) lightweight hard side camper. It weighs about 500lbs as is, and I’m assuming the truck will be pushing its payload capacity of 1500lbs once we are packed up for long term, long distance trips. I’ve been working endlessly to save up for the camper, and have spent weeks researching suspension work, which I’ve never done for a build. This alone is easily forcing me to double my budget, and my partner mentioned the idea of just avoiding any unnecessary work for at least our first trip, which is a few months in Baja.

I’d love to hear from people on their experiences and advice in this regard. It’s not unfeasible to invest the money into upgrading my suspension, but it’s probably the last thing I want to spend months saving up for. My main priority is comfort and reliability for both ourselves and the truck, which is otherwise in great shape.

I constantly see trucks extremely overloaded, like massive hardside campers on i4 Tacomas, but I imagine it’s different driving around town and driving 1500 miles to Cabo off-road. I also am aware this isn’t good, but want to explore my options as I’m not exceeding my payload persay.

The camper is a Bel Air/USA Camper, which is wood and aluminum overcab that’s bolted on. I’ve had 4 of them on different trucks, and have never upgraded my suspension nor cared to, but they also served as lightly loaded daily drivers rather than multi-month long homes off roading regularly.

 

Add some air bags to the rear, and make sure you have good tires. That is about it. I often drive long distances (MT to AZ) at max payload capacity. You will probably have more issues with the air resistance at freeway speeds than the weight.

 

SumoSprings should fix your problem, airbags as wel

 

Need vs want

 

my point exactly. I know a lot of off road enthusiasts may emphasize the need for the best. All I want is for my truck to still function and to avoid extra wear n’ tear.

 

Well, the laws of physics cannot be cheated. Carry more mass, have more frontal area, you have to use more energy to get that 'stuff' up to speed. More energy means burning more fuel, more waste heat, more pressure, more metal fatigue....

No way around that. More....is more.

Now what you can do something about, is comfort, and handling. Our trucks, like many other 1/2 tons, have a somewhat soft suspension, because that's what feels good to most 'normal' people who drive around unloaded.

There are ways to fix this....like heavier springs...(expensive) but airbags are cheap, and adjustable so you don't have to live with the stiffer suspension all the time.

Tires are not cheap....but are the pretty much 'universal' upgrade.....that is, whatever you drive....good tires will help you out....especially if you are running near max capacity.

 

Wasn’t all this covered in your other post? You want the most for the least amount of money.

 

I've been considering one of those too. Not the most stylish, or inexpensive, but I think it's the only one like it made today. The company seems pretty good to deal with too. I've had a few conversations with them this month. Good luck.

 

I think a lot of us told you that you had options. We're not saying you have to go with top of the line options like Kings. We were just warning you that even the more budget friendly options are expensive, especially when you're not doing the labor.

You're wanting to go to remote places in Mexico with a truck loaded near the max payload. You can attempt it on stock suspension. It might be fine, or it may go horribly bad.

At minimum you need to think about the rear suspension. I guess air bags could work but most people don't recommend them offroad. I would want new leaf springs designed to carry excess weight.

 

'04 SR5 4x4 AC TRD Off-Road with ARE camper shell, heavy duty rear bumper and dual swing arm hitch mount. Ive got airbags and a 1" lift block on my otherwise stock rear suspension with Bilstien 4600s. Unloaded I have the bags inflated to about 5 pounds for around town driving with truck level. Fully loaded with extra 20 gals of gas on roof rack, 25 extra gals of water in containers in bed and all camping gear, I inflate bags to about 50 pounds and the truck rides level. Traveled the entire Cathedral Valley loop road in Capitol Reef NP this past Memorial day with no problems. Approximately 1200 lbs of extra weight.

 

Just a note to toss it out there for OP (Nick) in case he doesn't know: Don't connect your bags to each other, run them separately, inflate separately. This is apparently not common knowledge. You'll get sloppier response if the bags can share air. A lot of people go the easy route, and run a "T" connecting both bags to one outlet. Very typical error to make.

 

It should be. It's in the instructions that come with the airbags, or at least it was in mine.

 

I don't have the instructions on hand and didn't use the Google machine, but you're telling us that people to don't install according to instructions and T it even though there's likely enough line to do it independently from compressor?
Wonder how mine were done years ago? They lose pressure over about a day so.i.have to get them back to 10lbs when I think about it. Guessing I have a bad connection somewhere

 

Indeed. Your leaking somewhere. Mine are like tires, I only need to top them up a few times a year, or after letting out the pressure on purpose.

But yes, there are various examples of people who T them together....which undoes most the anti-sway benefits of airbags.

 

Well shit, look what I found...so there should have been 2 lines coming directly from compressor? I'll look under hood in am when light..

 

More reading on this topic: https://www.tundras.com/threads/air-bags-for-rear-suspension.122217/#post-3132658

And more: https://www.tundras.com/threads/2005-rear-suspension-help.117313/#post-3029783

I made a drawing of a proper setup around here somewhere, but ... meh.

Gist is this: Each bag should have its own independent air. Don't connect the two bags together, it defeats the purpose. There's a couple of ways to accomplish this, but the cheapest is to run two separate lines.

 

I don't use a compressor...my air bags are just plumbed to standard schader vales that I mounted on either side of my license plate.

They do make on air compressors with two circuits, and you can rig a valve to isolate the left and right even if filled from the same source.

But either way, air bags work a lot better to reduce sway when the left and right are separately pressurized.