Toyota IFS Truck - Rock-Ready

After the knuckles were stripped-down, we removed the cotter-pins and castle-nuts from the upper and lower ball-joints. Then separated the knuckle from the upper and lower A-arms using a pickle fork (a ball-joint puller would also work well).

We removed the upper and lower A-arms from the vehicle and then disassembled the upper arms so that we could reuse the cross-shafts.

Total Chaos includes new Polyurethane suspension bushings to replace all of the rubber bushings, but two of the upper arms' metal inner bushing sleeves are re-used. This helps to help keep the price down, but does require some extra work. We ended up just cutting the bushings out of the arms to save a little time. Then we cut the outer metal sleeve off of the bushings, peeled most of the rubber off of the inner metal sleeve and then used a wire wheel to get off last of the rubber residue.

Clean-Up and Parts Prep

The stock bump-stops will be reused, but they must be removed, repositioned and then reinstalled.

A small portion of the stock upper shock mounts must be trimmed to make room for the new coil-over shocks. We marked our cut lines with a paint pen and then used a 4" angle grinder with an abrasive cut-off wheel to remove the stock shock mounts.

The stock droop-stops also need to be removed. We used a cut-off wheel (on a 4" angle-grinder) to remove most of the material and then switched to a sanding disc to remove the last of the welds from the frame-rails.

Pre-Assembly

The tapered upper ball-joint hole needs to be drilled out to a straight 3/4-inch hole to accept the 1-inch Uni-ball. It's absolutely critical to drill that hole straight so that the Uni-ball misalignment spacer sits flat on the spindle.

After they were drilled, we decided to paint the spindle uprights so they would be dry by the time we would need to reinstall them.

We used a wire brush to clean the frame-rails and then laid down a coat of primer and semi-gloss black spray paint.

The new upper control-arm and cross-shafts must be pre-assembled in a specific order. First, we greased the inside and outside of the long red urethane bushing and pressed it into the backside of the control-arm (with the flange toward the outside). Next we slid the cross-shaft onto the A-arm.

Then we greased the short bushing (inside and out) and pressed it in the short side of the arm (with the flange toward the outside). Finally, we pressed the metal inner sleeves into place and reinstalled the stock washers and nuts.

The lower arms are fully plated and include mounts for an optional secondary pair of shocks. There's a whole range of accessories and upgrades that enthusiasts can purchase from Total Chaos to customize the basic kit. We installed new bushings in the lower control-arms and pressed the inner metal sleeves into place.

CV Axles

Long-travel 4WD IFS kits typically require expensive custom CV shafts, but Total Chaos designed their Caddy Kit to use stock T-100 CV axles, which are 3.25" wider than stock, per side. The longer T-100 shafts are capable of delivering power through the full 12" of vertical wheel travel without any modifications. T-100 CV's are readily through local auto-parts stores and only cost around $200 for a complete pair (With core).

To remove the CVs, we applied penetrating lubricant to the mounting hardware. After letting it soak in for a few minutes, we were able to remove the CV's.