Pending Shock upgrade!
by RAT on Jan.04, 2009, under Wheeling
After a trip to Anza Borrego I ended up breaking the mount off one of my OME shocks. I guess they weren’t made for racing through the desert! Of course the shock was a tad too short for my needs being only a 9″ shock. I ended up replacing the shock with some emergency Autozone special Garbriel shocks which were surprisingly 8.5″ shocks. I was sure I’d get some weak sauce 6″ stock length shocks, but I was pleasantly surprised later when I measured them. Not bad for $16.99+tax and a life time warranty!
I’ve been looking around for what a good shock upgrade would be and found that the Short Body Bilstein 7100s were the ticket. They gave you a good amount of extension with a smaller shock body that can fit in the stock location. I found a set of 10″ 7100s resevoir shocks on pirate4x4 for a resonable price and ended up picking them up. I’ve attached some shock pRon for you to oogle!
As you can see they came with some nice Outlaw Offroad mounts and are in pretty good shape still. These puppies are completely user rebuildable and revalvable. The current valving is 170/60 which I hear is perfect for the weight of a Tacoma. I heard some feedback on TTORA that 255/70 was a little too harsh so I got lucky scoring the lighter valved version.
The installation will be a little more challenging than I first thought. The 7100s come with 1/2″ ID heim joints which of course won’t mount to the 3/4″ OD Tacoma Shock mounts. I toyed around with the idea of adding some 12mm reduction misalignment spacers and using a 12mm bolt off the stock mounts like someone on TTORA did, but decided against it. The setup puts an enormous amount of leverage on the stock mounts, and I don’t believe I have enough room with my huge 33″ spare to fit the shocks inboard where they would need to be.
The current plan is to remove the heims and purchase some Energy Suspension hourglass shaped bushings that I can hopefully stuff into the 1″ eye openings. The specs are 3/4″ ID. 1″ min O.D. 1 1/8″ MAX OD 1 7/16″ long. The Energy Suspension part is will be 9.8108r for the red bushings. They are $4.59 / pair from Kragen so I’ll put in an order tomorrow for a set to try out. Hopefully all will come together and I’ll have my shocks ready to rock in a few days!!
