Offroad shop recommendations

Hi fellow Tacoma owners,

Intro: I have been looking for a Tacoma for a long time and after looking at some real messed up ones I found the one! It was owned by a police chief for 11 years and very well taken care of.

Now I of course want to lift my truck; I am looking to do a 3in body lift and the Rough Country 6in lift for the Gen1 Tacoma's.

Question: Does anyone recommend any shops 50 miles radius of Seattle area that do lifts and are also budget friendly? (I can do a lot of work, but I don't want to deal with extending break lines etc..)

Any help is welcomed!




This is my truck with me plasti-dipping the wheels and grille

 

Welcome.

Mule expedition outfitters in Issaquah.

I’d steer away from drop bracket and body lifts if you’re going to even think about light off-roading

 

Unless you want a shitty ride, stay far away from rough country

 

Thanks for the recommendation. Do you mean like off-roading on the more extreme side? Honestly I just want my truck to be as high as possible and would use it as a commuter for the most part and then twice a year go to the dunes with it(not to do any jumps or anything crazy either). Do you see anything going wrong at the dunes with body lift or drop bracket?

This is what it would basically look like: (From YotaTech)

I read and watched Youtube videos of people saying that their quality has improved recently? Isn't a drop bracket good for lifts because then you can steer more normally and drive similar to stock??

 

DB lift is fine if you're just commuting or playing in the sand. A 3" body lift is going to be more work as you're probably going to have to extend some electrical stuff and your bumpers will have to be adjusted to match the cab. I'd skip the body lift since you're already doing a 6" DB lift. Most people here shun DB lifts since they're associated with the bro-dozer crowd but they're fine if you're not doing some rock crawling or what not.

 

This is just my two cents, but scrap all of that. Put on some OME Nitros. They'll give you 2.5" of lift, and plenty of room for 33"s. You're talking about 9" of lift. It's going to absolutely chew up ball joints, require brackets and t case/diff/carrier drops, and ride like hammered dog shit. And even after all that, it's going to be completely gutless once you strap 35s on it. That 3.4L is not exactly peppy in anything other than 4LO. And again, personal opinion, but I think it will look comically stupid. The one you posted is sitting up at almost 7' tall, but the front bracket for the "lift" has like 8" of ground clearance, lol.

Anyway, food for thought. My prior setup for reference:

 

Thank you sir for your non-biased response! Good info, I will definitely be considering that as well..

Thank you for your two cents as well, but if we look at the DB being 8in from the ground, then aren't the SAS's also like 8-9in away from the ground? I understand the benefit of SAS for off-roading etc, but if you're on flat ground, the ground clearance is pretty similar.

I thought that DB lifts don't chew up ball joints and the ride is very similar to stock other than 35s.

 

Whoa, wait. What? I'm not talking about SASing a vehicle. That involves cutting of the frame and welding on shock hoops or hangers, and a whole bunch of other stuff that's WAAAAAAY outside the scope of this post.

I'm talking about a regular old Old Man Emu Nitrocharger suspension. It can be done in your driveway in an hour.

There's some contention there. Theoretically, the geometry is mostly maintained. So let's say that everything goes perfect and the drop bracket setup isn't wearing your components down harder/faster. You've basically done nothing to increase ground clearance or suspension performance, and have messed with the center of gravity assuming you're actually going to drive it off-camber. Would not recommend.

Even with 4.10s, that engine is going to be sucking wind with 35s. But I dunno. It's your truck, none of us can tell you different.