Comfort Shackle

Has anyone tried these or similar?




In the 1990's I had a 1988 Toyota 4WD pickup that I had done a lot of changes on and one of those changes was the rear leaf spring shackles. I don't remember the name of the shackles I installed but they were similar to the ones pictured above in that they were a dual shackle design but instead of the leaf spring being above the shackle the spring was below the shackle, like a shackle flip on a Tacoma so to speak. I've read some pretty negative reactions to people that have tried flipping shackles on a Tacoma so I thought the ones pictured were interesting.

 

Double shackles aren't used very much for a reason, when they unload they can fold in on themselves and cause problems. I don't think you'll see many benefits from them, that's why they haven't been used since the 90s. It was a good experiment to see if they helped though.

 

The shackles I had on the Toyota pickup had a limiting stop built into them to avoid the issue you're referring to but I don't see any limiting stop on the shackles in the pictures I posted.

I also noticed back then that the rear tire that was the lowest didn't seem to have a lot of traction when at full droop but it definitely helped traction before it reached full droop.

In a video that Archive Garage made it stated the most travel in leaf springs made for the Tacoma is around 12.5". These shackles would increase that number. Whether or not that increase in travel is effective/useful or not I don't know.