These days it seems like everyone is ditching their Independent Front Suspension (IFS) in favor of installing a solid axle under the front of their Toyotas. But don't get out the cutting torch before you first check out Superlift's IFS lift system. This lift provides room for tall tires, is built tough, and looks fantastic.
How it works:
For the rear of the vehicle, Superlift offers several ways of lifting. You can choose tall lift blocks, a smaller block with an add-a-leaf, or replacement springs.
I went with the replacement springs. These springs each contained four arched leaves in the pack plus a flat fifth overload leaf, as well as a 3-degree alignment shim. The stock springs on my 1987 4Runner used 3 leaves plus an overload leaf.
The lift for the front is more complicated. The front IFS crossmember and lower control arms are removed. A new front crossmember is provided that lowers the pivot points for the control arms by four inches. A rear crossmember lowers the rear points slightly further.
Since these brackets spread the inboard ends of the control arms by about four inches, the outboard ends need to be similarly spread to keep a reasonable suspension geometry. This is accomplished with a pair of knuckle adaptors. These bolt to the stock knuckle assembly, moving the mount for the upper ball joint appropriately, and also raises the mounts for the steering components to keep the steering and ride the same.
A side effect of using knuckle adaptors is that you must use wheels with 3.75" or less backspacing. The reason: with the knuckle adaptors in place, the end of the upper control arm is no longer inside the wheel - its now just inboard of the tire itself. With more backspacing, the upper control arm would slice into the tire. This isn't a major limitation - for rollover resistance, you should generally build your vehicle wider as you go taller, and less backspacing accomplishes that goal. Furthermore, most aftermarket wheels have 3.5" of backspacing. Still, don't plan on using your stock 4.5"-backspaced wheels with this lift.
To keep reasonable angles on the CV joints, the front differential is lowered with bracketry.
While there are several kits on the market that use this basic method for lifting IFS vehicles, the Superlift sets itself apart by using one-piece welded crossmembers integral to their control arm mounting brackets. Furthermore, these crossmembers are made of 3/16" rectangular steel tubing. This is by far stronger than the stock crossmember which is made of much thinner material.
First impressions on the parts:
I was impressed by the overall quality, strength, and finish of the parts. The smooth painted surfaces you see on most lifts tends to show scratches easily. Superlift uses a textured black finish on most of the parts. The texturing should go a long way towards hiding imperfections and trail scratches, in much the same the the texturing on house walls does the same there.
The shocks provided in the kit appeared to be of good quality, comparable in size and construction to other off-road shocks. During the installation of the lift, I also installed an optional Superlift steering stabilizer. It is much larger than the wimpy stock unit, but still fits perfectly in the original mounts, and the install of the stabilizer only took minutes.
On the rear springs, the paint finish wasn't quite as nice as it was on the other parts. Springs are usually shipped without a box, so they get a little nicked up during transport. It won't affect the way they work, but it was a departure from the great finish present on all the other parts.
Installation:
Initially, the installation took me about a week of evenings, but I was going very slow and doing a lot of grinding and painting of scars beneath the truck. Many trail miles had taken their toll on my stock suspension. Most of its various mounting points had been bashed on rocks and were bent out of shape. A better mechanic than me could probably finish the install much quicker. With air tools, a lift, and a less-abused vehicle to work on, this lift could probably go on completely in a day or at least in a weekend.
After the initial install and testing, i spent a few evenings tweaking the suspension, and I suspect I'll be fiddling with it for a while.
The installation instructions were somewhat better than I had anticipated. The clear diagrams really helped to illustrate the way things go together.
Here's a brief rundown of the procedure. Superlift's instructions are much more detailed, but this will give you an idea of what is involved. Places where I deviated from Superlift's instructions are in italics.
Do the rear lift first, so you know how much to adjust the torsion bars in the front. The rear springs came with no instructions, but the procedure was pretty obvious.
I ignored this step and dove into the front lift first.
Jack up the front of the vehicle, and rest the frame rails on jackstands a few inches rearward of the swaybar mounts. Set the emergency brake and chock the rear wheels. Remove the front wheels.
Remove the anti-sway bar and front skid plate.
Remove the front shocks.
Remove bolts that attach the lower control arms (LCAs) to the frame. Dislodge the LCAs from the frame and let them hang.
I removed my LCAs altogether in order to perform a needed replacement of one of my control-arm bushings, and to paint my badly scratched LCAs.
Remove the front crossmember. Bolt the new crossmembers in place using the stock holes where the LCAs pivoted. These holes are actually slots used for front-end alignment. Superlift provides large square washers that align the crossmembers appropriately in the slots, and provide instructions on dealing with crossmembers that don't quite fit right.
On my installation, the stock brackets were so badly beaten from trail use I had to spend quite a bit of time beating them back into shape so they would more readily accept the Superlift crossmembers.
Per Superlift's instructions, I slightly modified some of the square washers to allow a good fit between the frame brackets and the new crossmembers.
Relocate the front differential: Support it with a jack, remove the mounting bolts, lower it with the jack, then install the supplied bracketry to hold it in the new position.
On my installation, a stock bracket that had held the stock front crossmember was in the way of the mounting hole on the front differential cover. I bent the now-unused stock bracket out of the way.
Re-attach the lower control arms to the new crossmembers. This is done with the stock cam bolts. Since the new crossmembers are designed to allow a greater alignment range, you need to remove the cam washers from the stock bolts and press on some new supplied washers.
This was a major hassle and one part of the install I think could be improved. Removing the old washers was trivial, but getting the new ones pressed on properly took far longer than I expected. The instructions say to use a section of pipe or tubing. This didn't work for me. I eventually filed the holes a little bigger then improvised a shop press with my bench vise. Those of you with a hydraulic press will likely find this to be an easy task, but it frustrated me.
Install the knuckle adaptors.
To do this, you need to remove the upper ball joint with a puller. Then you insert the supplied tapered sleeve into the tapered hole. This sleeve will remind many of you of the cone washers used in many toyota hubs. It serves basically the same purpose -- to provide a solid mating of a straight bolt in a tapered hole. Then you bolt on the adaptor.
I found that one machined area of the adaptor wasn't quite wide enough for the mating surface of the stock spindle. A moment with a disc grinder solved that problem.
Install compression travel bump-stop extensions: Superlift provides these to extend the bumpstops so the suspension isn't over-compressed. These extensions are somewhat shorter than the four inches the arms are extended, which means after the lift, you get more suspension travel than you did in the stock configuration. These extensions are simply steel cylinders with threaded holes on each end. On one side it uses metric threads (to accept the stock bumpstop), and standard thread on the other side (to bolt into the frame mounts with a supplied bolt). A cool thing about this setup (not mentioned in the manual) is that if you want to use standard-threaded aftermarket bumpstops, you could simply invert the extensions. The threads on the 'standard' side mate perfectly with the few aftermarket bumpstops I had in my parts pile, and all you'd need is a metric bolt to bolt the 'metric' side to the stock bracket on the frame.
Install front shock absorbers. The instructions warn that some wide-bodied shocks might interfere with the bumpstop extenders. I did not have that problem with the Superlift shocks provided in the kit.
Brake hose relocation: Instructions and brackets are provided for modifying the brackets and routing of the stock brake hoses to work in the lifted configuration. Alternatively, you can keep all the brackets in place and use the optional Superlift extended brake lines. These lines were covered with a tough braided stainless steel covering that looks sharp. I chose this option.
Reinstall the anti-sway bar. Brackets are provided that allow the bar to clear the front driveshaft and for the endlinks to reach the LCAs.
Reinstall the skid plate. You can either re-use the stock skid plate or use an aftermarket plate. I used Superlift's optional matching plate of 3/16" steel, and I think it looks great mated with the ARB Bullbar I installed while the truck was in the garage for the lift.
Adjust the torsion bars for final ride height to match the rear. The instructions and diagrams give measurements for how high to adjust the bars for 4 to 5 inches of total lift.
Re-check all components for tightness, etc.
Install "Warning to Driver" decal. The decal reads:
This is good advice. It is important to install this decal - the warranty depends on it.
Adjust headlights to proper settings
Have a front end realignment done, to stock settings.
The rear was quite a bit easier to put on. I simply replaced the stock rear springs with the lift springs. The thicker pack, combined with the alignment shim were too much for my stock U-bolts, so I had to buy longer bolts. The new springs were provided with polyurethane bushings. I had been using longer aftermarket shackles with my stock springs. I went back to the stock shackles for use with the Superlift springs.
First impressions with lift installed:
Wow, this lift looks great. I found a nice deal on a used set of 33x12.50 BFG Mud Terrain tires and had them mounted on the only set of wheels I owned with the proper backspacing for this lift. It took a little getting used to the step-in height with the added height of the lift and the taller tires!
Its was very surprised at how much room the lift opens up around the engine bay and around other parts of the vehicle. For instance, I believe with the lift in place it would be possible to remove the oil pan without moving the front differential or playing with the motor mounts. Similarly, it is now a lot easier to get a hose into the wheel wells to spray off mud or to remove mud flaps.
Despite switching from an extended spring shackle to the stock ones, the rear lifted higher than I wanted - but I was shooting for the low side of the 4-5" advertised lift. A big part of my problem was that I had added an ARB bullbar and a Warn XD9000 winch at the same time as the lift. I suspected that all the extra weight in front of the front axle had, like a balance beam, removed a lot of the weight from the rear. This was confirmed by a trip to the scales. The folks at Superlift advised me to remove the leaf on the spring packs that was just above the load-leaf. This solved the problem perfectly, and allowed me to go back to the stock U-bolts.
Testing:
It was time for the test drive! I have to be honest and say everything wasn't 100% perfect the first trip out. I had a pretty bad driveline vibration when coasting. After spending hours messing with alignment shims and so forth, I discovered there was some play in my transfer-case output flange. The vast majority of the vibration went away when I re-torqued the bolt holding the flange. I still have a tiny bit of vibration. Superlift says that vibration complaints with this lift are rare, and that vibration is generally due to worn U-joints, loose flanges, or an out-of-balance driveshaft. I'm inclined to believe them -- my driveshaft has certainly seen better days in the 175,000 miles of its lifetime.
Because of warning from others that a tall lift and big tires makes for a lousy street ride, I wasn't expecting much in that department. To my delight, the ride wasn't bad at all. The valving on the Superlift shocks seemed to be just about right, and I didn't notice any particular harshness.
A local 4x4 shop has a ramp, so I went to see how the new suspension would flex. I wanted to check for things like brake line length, and shock sizing in a controlled setting, before breaking things on the trail. I had taken some baseline measurements before on the same ramp, so I would have a basis for comparison. I also wanted to see how the fit would be with the tires I was using.
On the first trip up the ramp with the new suspension, there was a variety of small problems. For starters, I couldn't go as far up the ramp without lifting a wheel. Upon closer inspection, I found that the knuckle adaptors, on compression, were binding against the upper control arms in the area around the pocket that holds the upper ball joint. I wasn't on the bumpstops.
In the rear, the added length of the lift springs (to accomodate the larger arch) caused the shackles to lay down flatter than before on compression (when the arched spring flattens out). The shackle went back far enough, in fact, that they would bind against my rear bumper mounts. Most of you won't have this problem - my custom bumper uses mounts that are adapted from a Draw-Tite towing receiver hitch, and these mounts don't give a lot of room for shackle travel.
Other potential problems I noted while on the ramp are that when the right rear tire is stuffed into the wheel well with the left wheel extended, the driveline would eventually make more contact with the gas tank skid plate. This probably won't be a problem for those of you with pickups - the 4runners have gas tanks that drop down lower than the tanks on the pickups. When the rear axle was articulated the other way, the cable for the parking brake was getting stretched pretty far.
Fortunately, there are few clearance problems on a 4x4 that can't be solved with gratuitous use of a grinder. Once I enlarged the opening on the underside of the upper control arms, i could compress the suspension to the bumpstops, even at full turning lock. For the rear, grinding away a part of the bumper bracket bought back the articulation there. Finally, the problem with the parking brake cable was solved by relocating a cable-clamp from the frame to an existing hole on the spring hanger. Note that most of these problems would be an issue with any lift of this height, and are not specific problems with the Superlift product.
On the trail:
I finally got a chance to test the setup at the Evans Creek ORV area in Washington state. The lift performed well. The added clearance below the rocker panels was a nice benefit and I spent a lot less time than usual making contact between the terrain and parts of my truck other than my tires. My friends even coaxed me into attempting a truck-eating mud hole. I didn't make it through, but I had a lot of fun getting stuck in and winched out!
Incidentally, I had some non-related engine trouble during this trip and had to be towed off one of the tougher trails. I was extremely grateful to have the lift while being towed through ruts deeper than my windows! The lift kept body damage to a minimum. Due to some miscommunication and the lack of power-assist steering and braking when the engine is off, I nearly rolled the vehicle under tow. This near-rollover had nothing to do with the new lift - I couldn't steer fast enough to keep up with the terrain and accidentally drove off the trail and up a large embankment at a high speed. I bring this up because the 4Runner was up on its two left wheels, but eventually slammed down violently back on the right side. The components of the lift took the impact well with no damage. My head, on the other hand, slammed into my interior rollcage. I think its time for me to write a review on roll bar padding!
Overall, I'm very pleased with this offering from Superlift. If you're looking to lift your IFS Toyota vehicle to fit larger tires, have more ground clearance, and enjoy better approach and departure angles, be sure to check this one out.
Superlift products are available from Rocky Mountain Suspension Products.
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