Wescott Designs "lift" question...

I have a 2016 Off Road. I replaced the shocks with TRD Pro Fox takeoffs from a 2022 Pro. Also added an AAL in the rear, a u bolt flip kit and new bump stops in the rear. Currently sitting on 265/75/16, but those tires are about ready to replace. I'd love to go bigger, but definitely can't fit 285's as is.

My question is re: the Wescott Designs "lift." Are these any good?? Since I do have the Off Road, would I need the TRD Off-Road preload collar lift kit or the TRD Pro lift kit?? They appear to be the exact same, from what I can see, but just want some confirmation.

Any help/info/suggestions/experiences would be great. Thanks everyone!

 

Check out the 255/85R16 threads on here. It is a ~33" tire that works with the Caster set on the lower control arms shoved forward, no lift necessary.

 

if you’re asking about spacers, no.

6112 are relatively cheap, do not use a spacer, and are adjustable.

 

From what I can tell, they preload the spring, so they're not exactly a "spacer" but accomplish the same thing.

I got too good of a deal on these Fox shocks, so I'm riding with these for the foreseeable future. Thanks for your input..

 

You need the collar for the pro shocks if you have upgraded to the factory Fox. It’s a great kit, and not just a spacer lift as many have mistaken it for. Rides pretty much the same as well.

 

Well, spacers are bad. And they don’t preload.
So if it’s a spacer that goes into the spring and preloads it, that is worse.

if it’s a collar, that’s fine if the shock is in its range of travel, assuming the spring is not preloaded making ride worse.

or other suspension is simply adjustable

 

Quoting myself from another recent thread. Strongly discourage it.

It's a spring and a preload collar,

 

Agree. Buy the kit for the "pro" for your shocks.

 

All you really need is stiffer springs for your Fox Pro shocks if you’re looking for more lift to fit 33” tires. I highly recommend the 255/80/17 or I believe the equivalent for off road wheel is 255/85/16 possibly

I don’t know much about ride quality of Westcott collar but I did just receive my rock sliders from them and they are very high quality. Doesn’t mean the collar is or isn’t though so I don’t have an answer for your actual question

 

Don't really like the "pizza cutter" look...

 

I was going to have @Bishop84 chime in, but he already has.

As mentioned previously in another thread the Wescott spacer lift rides like sh*t. Go with the 6112/5160 Bilstein instead.

 

Jeff Wescott is annoying.

The kit uses a spacer that replaces the factory top hat to set the preload (as well as changing the collar). It’s a spacer lift. He can call it whatever he wants, but that’s what it is.

That’s just for the front.

For the rear, it’s a spacer lift. Actually blocks for leaf springs.

If you want the pro shocks, which imo ARE good shocks for what they are designed for, then maybe consider the eibach lift springs for the TRD fox pros. They take the shock out of the ride zone of that bypass shock less I think. About a 1/4 inch.

If not, a set up made for that desired lift is going to be better. I’m not a fan of bilsteins myself, but even that would ride better than spacers on a internal bypass..

 

Annoying maybe but they make a damn badass rock slider with beautiful welds as Jeff says. He ain’t lying

 

I went with the eibach springs over the wescott lift for my pro suspension and did aal in the rear.

 

With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

I could be wrong. If this is the one according to the description it doesn’t change geometry or preload and doesn’t act like a traditional spacer.

https://westcottdesigns.net/product/2020-2022-tacoma-fox-trd-pro-lift-kit-front-only/

only potential pitfall might be no ability to offset/stagger the heights to compensate for gas tank “taco lean”

might be worth it if Fox takeoffs are had for cheaper than 6112

 

If you're running Front coilovers off a 2022 TRD PRO on your truck, then that is the Westcott kit you'd want to match (2022). Look for the TRD PRO front collar pre-load kit for a 2022

https://westcottdesigns.net/product/2020-2022-tacoma-fox-trd-pro-lift-kit-front-only/

 

Going to chime in here as I recently did the whole “how do I lift my trd pro” search. Since you have TRD Pro Fox takeoffs, the Westcot kit or the Eibach spring kit for the TRD Pro (make sure you specify 2022 as the springs changed a bit between the years) are what you’re looking for.

Westcot does this: the bottom perch needs to be replaced with what Westcot provides. The Westcot perch adds extra preload to the stock spring (it’s thicker) which in turn creates a portion of the lift. Their design finishes it off with a top spacer. It’s only a 1/4” spacer so likely will not add any extra stress to your shock. Typically spacers that mount on top of the top hat are risky because of the stress they put on the shock at full stuff/bottom out. However, the 1/4” spacer Westcot provides shouldn’t cause any issues. The reason Westcot went with this design was to achieve lift with the stock TRD Pro spring and balancing it with ride comfort. Any time you add preload to a coil over, it does two things, gives you lift, stiffens up your ride a bit.

Eibach spring kit: achieves the same thing except with a longer spring. Longer spring means your coilover will get more “pre-load” from the longer spring. The Eibach spring is a 650lb spring so same weight ratio (or similar) to the stock spring but just a bit longer. The longer springs give you the same lift height as the Westcot which is around 1.5” with stock bumper.

Both kits require you do something to the rear. The common solution using a 1” block or add a leaf. A 1” lift in the back will level out your truck with either of the kits above You don’t want to go any taller than a 1” lift in the rear without replacing the rear shocks with longer ones. If you want to keep the stock rear shocks, a 1” block or a 1” AAL will match up well with the Westcot or Eibach kit.

With all that said, I just purchased the Eibach kit with a 1” rear block. I’m more of a fan of replacing the spring to help with ride quality as opposed to adding preload with the stock spring. Also, the labor to replace just the spring vs doing all the steps with the Westcot kit was also a factor as I’ll be installing it myself. Keep in mind that Eibach manufacturers the stock TRD Pro Spring so in regards to quality between the stock spring and the Eibach kit will be the same.

Either way you go, there are plenty of positive reviews about both kits.

 

No need to stagger anything. The stock TRD Pro Coilovers have taco lean compensation built into the shock body. The drivers side shock’s spring perch mount is slight higher than the passenger side. So, either the Westcot or the Eibach kit won’t affect Toyota’s built-in compensation.

 

I ran the Wescott on my 2020 Pro for about a year and a half after running stock TRD Pro suspension for a year and a half, and now just swapped out recently to Fox Performance Elites.

Since others above have already described the types of lift options, I'd recommend reading through this page from Accutune that talks about attributes of different lift types, including the preload spacer/collar of the Wescott lift. The Eibach spring lift achieves basically the same effect, lift via pre-load increase; not having run it myself though I can't really speak to how it's effects on ride attributes compare to the Wescott though.
https://accutuneoffroad.com/spacer-lift-vs-preload-spacer-vs-coilover-preload/

Note that the tophat spacer part in the Wescott lift is small enough to not cause issues with the shock, only a 1/4" spacer for 1/2" lift on the front, and I've read of some people leaving this spacer out so that the front end is lifted the same amount as the rear end (1" and 1" vs 1.5" front and 1" rear).


As for my own experience... keep reading if you want a detailed wall of somewhat technical text.


For me, the lift did more or less what my research said it would, it added lift height and the ride firmed up so there was less body roll on turning and nose dive on braking. So if you mainly are on pavement and drive milder offroad, these will likely be benefits, which I've seen many talking about on TW and in the groups I'm part of on Facebook. And I will also say that to me it seemed like Wescott did put a lot of thought into exactly how to combine a tophat and a pre-load spacer to get the most amount of lift possible without putting your suspension at risk of damage from a larger tophat spacer or losing too much shock travel from a larger pre-load spacer. In terms of value and bang for your buck, I think it's a great option if your use case fits what others who speak positively of the kit are saying about their driving.

As for quality of the parts, when you handle the spacer pieces it's evident they were made to a much higher level of quality than most of the generic options off Amazon, fit and finish was excellent and most people looking at my truck's suspension up close who didn't know what a Wescott lift was assumed it was a stock TRD Pro setup. I did have a negative experience with the rear u-bolts however, for whatever reason mine rusted quite badly and quickly in less than a year of use and contrasted heavily with the worn but rust free state of my stock u-bolts when they were removed. I've not heard of other people having this issue, so given the high quality of the other parts I am inclined to assume I just got an unlucky piece that quality control missed for once.

However... if you go offroad a lot you will also find the downsides of lifting this way. An important note about the TRD Pro Fox suspension unlike other factory Tacoma options is that it utilizes internal bypass zones in the shocks. Bypass works by letting more shock fluid move within a certain range of shock travel around ride height and less movement at high etensions/contractions of the shocks, which enables a softer ride over small bumps while still giving firm absorption of large bumps, basically giving you the best of the TRD Sport and TRD Offroad suspension traits while minimizing the downsides of both overall. So a lot of my comments are specific to lifting a TRD Pro setup and not the other stock suspension versions Wescott makes.

The problem comes in that if you lift a coilover with internal bypass with a pre-load spring or collar, you move the normal ride height of the shock out of the position within this bypass zone it was designed to be in from the factory, so the shock is no longer setup as it was tuned from the factory. A firmer ride may be great on decent pavement and not affect the ride quality as Wescott claims on their site, but over bumpier roads and when offroad you absolutely will notice the worsened and rougher ride quality as the shocks will enter the firmer sections of the valving much faster and more often. Larger bumps were still ok since those would be in the firm zones already, but small and medium bumps were notably worse for me when running the Wescott lift than stock, and I also felt the truck jitter and bounce more often than stock.

Also, a lot of attention gets focused on lifting the IFS and coilovers, and its easy to forget about how the rear of the truck is lifted. The Wescott lift is just a super basic 1" block lift added to the stock leaf pack. Again, this is fine for mainly pavement and light dirt roads, and is defintiely the cheapest way to lift the rear end. I trashed this after not even a year of having it on due to it worsening my rear end ride quality offroad (again, it messes with the shocks' internal bypass zones), reducing my maximum rear end down travel, and causing rear end sag when adding weight in the bed to be worse than stock already was. At the "leveled" the Wescott set up is made to achieve, I constantly felt like the rear end was too low, and eventually ende dup doing a leaf pack with 1.5-2" rear lift, which helped fix rear end droop massively and improved performance over moderate bumps, but also made the issue of extending shocks outside the bypass zones even worse.

When I ran maintained forest service roads and daily drove my truck on the highway, I was fine with these downsides of the lift, but as I pushed my truck harder and drove more time offroad proportionately, the lowered ride quality became a real issue for me, causing more fatigue for me on longer days offroad than when the truck was stock, and when lifted the shocks became the limiting factor on down travel for both the front and rear of the truck instead of the springs.

Eventually I decided my use case had evolved enough to justify spending proper money on my truck to do what I wanted, and I recently had the whole suspension replaced with Fox Performance Elites set at about 2" of lift height. I still have to properly run the setup through its paces offroad, but driving the rough roads to where I work I already have seen a major increase in ride quality (less vibration/noise in the cabin and bumps happen more smoothly) and handling (the truck doesn't jitter or bounce anymore) as the truck goes over speed bumps, potholes, driveway entrances/exits, and generally rough asphalt road surfaces. The truck feels closer to stock now than when the Wescott lift was on ( that's a good thing in my view), and I haven't yet even begun to try adjusting the DSC knobs on the Fox's remote reservoirs to dial the high/low speed compression in yet. I don't think the hefty price tag of a setup like what I have gone to now is going to be right for most people, but for me it so far feels like what I really wanted from the start.

Also note that if you aren't installing yourself, your cost for a Wescott lift also goes up from paying for an allignment and installation; pre-load collars cost a lot more to install than a tophat spacer only because the coilover setup has to come apart for this work. So a $300-400 cost in parts can close in on 1K as a result, be a lot higher as a result.

So overall... I think the Wescott setup is great bang for the buck if you already have a TRD Pro setup and mainly want a bit more ride height, and aren't really pushing the truck to its hardest offroad too often. I think it's well thought out and well made, and offers good value compared to other options for lifting. Just be aware of its limitations, and that cost saving is really the only reason to get a spacer setup (even a well designed one) over a full suspension swap out. If I had anything other than a TRD Pro, I think I'd have just replaced the whole suspension from the get go instead.