Mid travel questions, and general discussion

Hey Tundra fanatics or whatever the best term is these days.

I have a few things I want to say (write) out loud just for second opinion or set of eyes on, I'll just give a pinch of background first.

I come from the landcruiser world, specifically 60 and 80 series cruisers but have friends/community with all series of cruisers. In general though, with a traditional beam front axle.
I came to this forum as my heavily modified 80 series got written off. It was built with one ton axles, triple convoluted bags, link suspension and fox shocks. cummins motor, 5 speed trans and full time transfer case, Widened front to back and side to side footprint, enlarged fenders, 40" tires for summer and 42" studded iroks on bead locks for winter.

I would winter wheel for ice climbing routes and use my FJ80 for hunting and camping. I do bomb down bumpy washboard roads a fair bit especially during hunting season though I do prefer to hunt on foot.

My replacement vehicle was a truck I had a sweet spot for, a decent low rust, lowish mileage first gen tundra DC. Though currently I bike to/from the office as I need the exercise and like not putting mileage on my vehicle(s)

Now that I'm investigating the road of long travel (desert trucks) vs. builds for mud holes and rocks, I'm just realizing a few things, one of which is:

If your going to build to go fast on desert whoops, reinforcing the frame and doing a cage quickly becomes a necessity

Please argue or add to, I just don't think it's spoken enough of. We focus on suspension components, but these things take a beating and I will say a first gen frame with a little bit of rust is going to end up with serious issues in time. Perhaps there should be a general consensus and it should be said more that frame reinforcement especially in the rear is inevitable.

Second:

The stock front IFS (specifically on 1st gen's) sucks.

Ya sure it's functional. The LBJ engineering/design flaw is almost a deal breaker. A 7.5" differential? Ya Lame! the length of the LCA's short and UCA's even shorter. The travel is much too limited, but drivability on pavement, well that's actually pretty decent. Any lift kit basically decreases suspension travel, only the long travel kits seem to correct some of the errors but widen the track of these things to where you want to trailer your truck to your wheeling spot.

The aftermarket spherical ball joints.. I live in place where roads are salted and gravel is on the road and gets everywhere. I see some cons for a daily driven usage, and the cost for a complete long travel kit is pricey pricey pricey (to me at least).


So where am I going with this?

After realizing the LBJ issue with 1st gen's I decided I want to build my own LCA's with a LBJ in compression as opposed to tension. Now I'm wondering if I do more and go a bit bigger.

For your feedback; I'm thinking of moving the UCA frame mount inwards closer to the motor as far as I can without interreference, possibly with a bolted (removable) bracket.

Then lengthen the UCA. As that's where a lot of travel limitation seems to come from (limited by UBJ angle and hitting coils). Also move the pivot point (UBJ) forward about an inch.

Next would be to cut and extend the knuckle. This would be heavily reinforced (should go without saying).

Next would be to build a bracket, (something akin to what's included with the 5" lift kits), to lower the mounting point of the LCA... But instead of going 5" down, only 2-3" down, but bring the pivot points about 3-4" inward to have longer LCA's without increasing overall width.

And finally build a new LCA and bracket that mounts where the stock LBJ would bolt to. This would have a tapered hole for a LBJ on the new LCA to go into, and move the TRE hole location upwards of stock to match stock angle.

This would move the front tire forwards about an inch to make trimming on the front of the fender only for 33's or 35's.

I can lower the differential a bit, but my concern is compression or extension of the axle shaft during suspension travel. Curious on the forums thoughts on potentially doing all this.

 

I think you'll be hard pressed to find much help on this forum with all of that if I'm being honest there's not many custom built (ie beyond bolt on) builds on this forum, let alone where the person did the work themselves. Race-Dezert or irate4x4 you might get better feedback, though while there are more fabrication and design capability individuals there, there's still a lot of retards to sift through which this forum is much better about.

With all that said, I haven't really fucked with Tundras that much but will give my two cents since I have a fair bit of experience with 4Runners which aren't much different than 1st gen Tundras.

While I would certainly agree on both those points, the cage part in specific is usually overlooked since it's a fairly massive undertaking (to do nicely at least) and most people probably argue if they're being smart the cage won't be needed--and to be fair, a full bodied vehicle was designed to survive a mild rollover.

If it was me, I would put a cage high on the list. I have been in high speed roll overs, had cages that got crunched, watched it happen to friends, etc. I would not want to go very fast in a non-caged vehicle. If you get to the point of actually needing long travel then you're in a position where it can get hairy really fast and when it goes sideways its going bad. Cage, seats, harnesses I would put high on the list if you plan to go over 50mph or so. In regards to frame reinforcement, well that just comes with the territory. The amount of times we've patched my friends long travel 4Runner frame since it keeps cracking in half is insane. A good cage will increase the chassis stiffness too, not that that eliminates localized issues but globally the chassis will be a lot happier (like not cracking in half).

Yea stock Toyota IFS can't cycle much. What people call "long travel" for Toyota's isn't much more than factory even. If you want serious travel you'll definitely have to move the mounts, but that brings in additional hurdles. IFS is significantly more complicated than a solid axle link geometry. Making it steer correctly, cycle, camber curve, caster curve, let alone trying to clear all the shit can snowball fast. To reiterate I haven't fucked with Tundras, but the 3rd gen 4runner guys use 1st gen Tundra axles for their "long travel" and you can actually pull 17-18" or more out of a stock Tundra axle. I have a 4Runner long travel design about to get built and (in CAD) it's cycling a bit over 17" using the stock frame mounts and the geometry staying pretty solid. I actually limit the travel due to the geometry going to shit as opposed to the axle actually binding. But that's more constraints, making sure your CV axle plunge is within limits, making sure the angles on the joints are acceptable at full travel and turn, etc.

I would be hesitant to bite off more than you can chew. Especially if you only want to run 33s or 35s. As with most things, if you do it yourself it ends up being a lot more expensive than buying something. A Total Chaos or Camburg kit with bypasses will be absolutely sweet. Doing it yourself will be absolutely sweet too, but there's a lot of ways you could make it worse. The amount of weeks I spent fucking with the steering on the first long travel kit I built just to make the bump steer not god awful was insane, and that was figuring out one variable (tie rod vertical location on the spindle). Add in moving the frame mounts, and all that other shit, and that's a lot going on. It's not uncommon to move the upper mounts inboard to get better geometry and leave the bottom mounts in the stock location. I would consider something like that before moving the lower mounts and all that other shit. I would even suggest just starting out with a stock width or the normal +3.5 or whatever long travel trucks run (it's not THAT much wider than stock) and start there and get a hang of it before moving the frame side mounts. Though I don't know what your level of expertise and capability is.

I think you need to ask yourself what are your actual objectives? How much travel do you want? How big of shocks? What size tires? What factory components do you want to keep? etc. That will narrow you in on what path to go down. For instance going with only a 35 (let alone a 33) really limits how much up travel you can have since your diff/frame will smash into the ground.

And then don't forget about the rear, but since it's a truck with a solid axle that's pretty simple obviously.

 

In the first GEN tundra build section, there is a build called Ivan – SAS. Lots of fabrication in that one.

 

Ya I read that thread. Commented on the motor output.

It's a sick rig.

In contrast to that, I'd like to eventually build mine to more of a stock-ish DD built truck. Simple but capable of eating up washboard at 40mph all day for one or two weeks of the year, and not shaking itself apart.

Here's some pics of the FJ80 I had. Front SD D60, rear 14B disc brake, I feel like I been down the solid axle path for a while and want to f__k with some IFS parts for a bit:

@snivilous thanks for the input! I think your right about keeping it simple for a bit first. I have some ebay UCA's and spacers for the front, maybe Ill order some HD deaver leaves next month and just play with that for now.