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king Performance Series Coilover Install Toyota Tacoma - billet Shaft End - Photo 29054552

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  • 7. A high-strength billet shaft end is adapted to each coilover's shaft to fit the specific applications. Some trucks (like new 4WD Tundras) require a much longer shaft end to clear the front CV axles. Each lower shaft end uses a steel spherical bearing for maximum strength and twisting capabilities.
7. A high-strength billet shaft end is adapted to each coilover's shaft to fit the specific applications. Some trucks (like new 4WD Tundras) require a much longer shaft end to clear the front CV axles. Each lower shaft end uses a steel spherical bearing for maximum strength and twisting capabilities.
1. Our test Taco already had a few extra inches of height added to its front end. A 1.75-inch-tall spacer kit had given the truck about three inches of lift at ride height (the strut attaches halfway down the A-arm). Unfortunately the large amount of lift also screwed up the geometry in the suspension and caused issues at full droop. 2. With the spacer placed on top of the stock-style strut to gain height, this truck also had a couple inches of extra droop. The overextended suspension would actually allow the knuckle and upper ball joint to bang against the coil. Spacers this tall were definitely no good for this first-generation Tacoma. 3. King has recently added a new installation center to its large facilities, so we headed straight there to install our new King coilovers on a lift. Though, we were taking the easy way out using King's hydraulic lift, all of this can easily be done on the ground in a driveway with some jackstands and a couple wrenches. The first thing our King tech did was to drop out those old struts and kick 'em to the curb as fast as he could. 4. Once the stock struts were out of the way, the King coilovers fit directly in place. 5.So a coilover can be bolted in place, King has machined billet aluminum adapters to bolt into the factory frame buckets of many IFS trucks. The Tacoma kit has three bolts that line up with factory holes in the frame. 6. Once installed into place, our billet aluminum adapters had their bolts tightened to hold the top of the coilovers onto the frame. Note the shrader valve on the side of the shock where the King coilover is filled with nitrogen.
7. A high-strength billet shaft end is adapted to each coilover's shaft to fit the specific applications. Some trucks (like new 4WD Tundras) require a much longer shaft end to clear the front CV axles. Each lower shaft end uses a steel spherical bearing for maximum strength and twisting capabilities. 8. After working the lower coilover rod end into place, we were able to sneak the factory bolt through the new coilover and its specifically-cut rod end spacers. No extra washers or anything else was needed to get a tight, perfect fit. 9. After getting our truck up on the vehicle lift, it seriously took less than 30 minutes to swap one side of our Tacoma to a King coilover. Though it's an absolute piece of cake to install, we'd suggest not trying this yourself if you've never done anything like this before. Suspension, brakes, and steering are nothing to mess around with if you don't know what you're doing. We were a little worried that on-road handling and ride might be a bit affected since we put on a hardcore King coilover designed for extreme use in a stock-style suspension, since the valving would be more geared towards off-road use. We're happy to report that we actually greatly improved the ride of this truck-even on the highway. There was a lot less wandering on bad bumps and uneven roads, and the suspension stopped bottoming out as easily in big ruts and giant potholes. We realize that just because we put coilovers on this truck, we are still a ways off from some long-travel prerunner, and we'll try to watch ourselves and treat it as such (and we'll see how long our well-behaved streak lasts). We'll have a long-term report on these new King coilovers in an upcoming issue.
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