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quote:

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Originally posted by kozaz:
""With the spacer, you might not need to cut into the upper stops, in fact I'd bet you don't unless you want to make them so the arm hits squarely instead of at an angle. We'd need to take a closer look at the ball joint set up to be sure.""

Frank, are you talking about the spacer kit that requires a 3 or 4 inch suspension lift? If so then I assume I would have to install a suspension lift like yours? Could you please clarify the spacer thing? I can be a bit of a rock head at times.

I plan on trying to keep my front suspension stock. What really got me thinking, was when you stated eariler that it could be possible to get the 12inchs of travel on stock IFS.

On the Downey Mega Travel Ball Joints, I could not find any info on the web. I only have the info in Downey's Book. If you want I could type in what they say about them later tonight?
I beleive they were about $45.00 a piece.

Question about air shocks, I assume that I need to find out the measurements of the OEM stock. (extended and collapsed).

But to take full advantage of the travel I need a new air shock with 8 more inchs of travel in addition of the OEM shocks original travel, or just a AIR shock with 8 inchs of travel?
Please clarify this for me the rocks are getting thicker?

Thanks,
Ryan

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Since I haven't seen the Downey ball joint I'm trying to imagine what they did. To get more up travel the lower a-arm needs to be farther away from the bumpstop. You can either lower the a-arm with a lift kit, or relocate the bump stop as I mentioned. When this happens, the spindle usually hits the UCA. I think maybe they just made a ball joint that spaces down enough so the spindle doesn't hit the upper a-arm. If that's the case what I wrote before doesn't make any sense. If that's that case you could get around it by grinding some material off of the uca at the lip where the ball joint mounts. I have some Rockstomper spacers in my upper ball joint that are only 1/4" thick and have no problems. For such a small spacing, I would just grind a little and save the bucks if I was to do it again.

With the air shocks you'll need about 8" total travel. I believe the shocks mount about 2/3 of the a-arm radius so they'd need 2/3's of the travel. If I'm wrong on the 2/3's part, it's just ratio of the distance the lower shock mounts are from the a-arm hinges over the total lenth of the a-arm. If it were half way you'd need 50% of the total travel or 6". I think 8 is more like it.

One thing to keep in mind is this, you are paving some new ground so you might want to do some research. I might start with what shocks are out there and then design around that. If you find a shock that fits the bill great. However, if you don't, you might want to go with less travel, or mod the shock mounts for a longer shock. Just depends on how much work you wanna do.

Good luck.

Frank.

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1994 4runner, 3.0, auto, 4.88's, 31's, BJ spacers, Coil spacers, air shocks, D-ring anchors, 4Crawler F/R swaybar discos.
www.sdori.com

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