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We've all seen the classic scene at the trailhead: a Tacoma or Tundra pulling up the access road, its rear bumper sagging. It's often hauling a vertical hitch rack loaded with five heavy bikes or a truck with six bikes over a tailgate pad, visibly squatting under the weight of gear bags, tools, and a cab packed with riders. Modern trucks are designed to haul cargo, but the unique stresses of a heavy mountain bike shuttle day create concentrated mechanical pressure on your vehicle. Factory suspension parts are tuned for empty truck beds and smooth highway driving, not for climbing unmaintained forest service roads fully loaded. If you are running multiple laps on local access roads, here's what your stock truck is dealing with and how you can configure it to manage the load. The Hitch Rack Leverage Multiplier When a truck manufacturer sets a maximum tongue weight rating, that figure assumes the weight sits directly on the hitch ball, just a few inches from the rear receiver. A vertical bike rack changes that setup. A steel or aluminum rack that holds 4 to 6 bikes weighs between 200 and 350 lbs. Since that weight extends several feet behind your rear bumper, it acts like a large lever arm. This leverage increases the effective tongue weight, compressing the factory leaf springs or coils far beyond their intended height. This sagging at the rear reduces your truck's upward suspension travel, decreases your departure angle, and lifts the front end. This shift unweights your front tires, making steering feel light and unstable just when you need precise control on tight, loose switchbacks. Tailgate Pads and Concentrated Rear Payload Loading bikes over a tailgate pad spreads out the weight better than a hitch rack, but it introduces another problem: concentrated payload at the rear. With five or six bikes over the tailgate, much of that weight is positioned right at the back edge of the bed, well behind the rear axle. Adding heavy gear bags, spare parts, and a cab full of four or five riders pushes your truck near its factory payload limits. Stock leaf packs often do not have the spring rate to maintain a level ride height in these conditions. High-Frequency Washboard and Shock Fade Climbing to the trailhead forces your suspension to cycle rapidly thousands of times per mile. Factory shocks are usually basic low-capacity, twin-tube designs. Under continuous impacts on rough washboard roads, the limited amount of hydraulic oil inside the shock can overheat quickly. This overheating causes the oil to foam and mix with gas. Once the oil foams, the shock cannot control the spring. Your truck starts to bounce uncontrollably, loses tire traction, and can bottom out hard on simple water bars. The Hidden Threat: Factory Alignment Cam Tabs Hitting rough roads while heavily loaded puts a lot of lateral stress on your lower control arms. Independent front suspension (IFS) setups, especially 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Gen Tacomas and 5th Gen 4Runners, rely on thin factory alignment cam tabs to keep the lower control arms in place. Under the stress of a loaded shuttle run, these factory tabs often bend or flatten. Once bent, your truck is out of alignment, knocking your steering wheel off-center and damaging your tires on the way home. How to Correctly Build a Shuttle Rig Fixing these problems involves more than just putting in a generic lift kit. Simply raising the ride height without changing the spring rate or shock capacity won't solve the underlying issues. It just makes your truck taller while it still bottoms out. A proper shuttle upgrade needs a reliable combination of three key elements: Increased Spring Rate: Upgrade to a progressive add-a-leaf or a heavy-duty replacement leaf pack (like a Deaver Stage 1) to handle the constant leverage from bike racks and bed payloads without sagging. Thermal Capacity: Switch to larger-diameter monotube struts or remote-reservoir shocks (like Bilstein 6112/5160 or Locked Offroad 2.0 setups) that hold more oil to dissipate heat and prevent shock fade. Chassis Reinforcement: Install aftermarket Upper Control Arms to restore steering geometry and strengthen your lower frame tabs to avoid alignment problems. Built by Riders, for Riders It’s true, we love to build trucks, but we don't just build trucks. Me and a lot of the crew spend our weekends out on the same access roads you do. That’s why pro riders like Jackson Goldstone, Matt Hunter, and Gracey Hemstreet trust our Surrey, BC shop to fine-tune their rigs. We have made upgrading your suspension easier by offering three specific, trail-tested packages aimed at addressing these common shuttle-day problems. If you want a dependable weekend setup, need a heavy-duty, fully rebuildable guide rig, or just curious what we can do, then check out our MTB Shuttle Truck Suspension Bundles or reach out to our team to get you sorted. View the full article
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If you’ve got a completely stock 2016 Toyota Tacoma and you want the best suspension and tire package for under $5,000 USD, this is the combo I’d point you toward every time. There are more expensive ways to build a Tacoma. There are flashier ways too. But if the goal is real performance, reliable parts, better ride quality, better off-road capability, and no wasted money, this setup hits an incredibly sweet spot. The truck started bone stock. The plan was simple: strip out the factory suspension, fix a couple of known Tacoma weak points while we’re in there, then install a package that gives you the best value-to-performance ratio on the market. What this Tacoma build is trying to accomplish? This is not a max-effort long-travel truck. It’s not a “throw every catalog part at it” build either. This is a budget-conscious Tacoma suspension build designed for people who want: A noticeable improvement on and off road A reliable setup that doesn’t need constant babysitting A truck that looks right, sits right, and rides right Bigger tires for people who don’t want to modify their frame Strong performance per dollar spent That’s the whole point of this package. No hype. No trend-chasing. Just really solid parts that work. Build Preparation: Why start with a clean slate? The first step we took was tearing the Tacoma down and pulling all the stock suspension components out so we could start fresh. Up front, that meant removing the factory coilovers, sway bar, and related hardware. Out back, it meant pulling the leaf packs and shocks and getting ready for the new setup. On an older truck, this is usually the point where seized bolts start reminding you who’s in charge. U-bolts often get cut off rather than fought with, and suspension hardware can go either way. Sometimes it comes apart clean. Sometimes one cam bolt sleeve decides it’s never leaving. Once the stock stuff is out, you can build the truck properly instead of stacking new parts on tired factory components. The Critical ECGS Bushing Upgrade Before going any further, you need to consider replacing the stock needle bearing with an ECGS bushing. This is one of those “do it now while you’re in there” upgrades on a lifted Tacoma. Here’s the issue. On the front differential, driver side only, there’s a needle bearing that the CV rides on. Once you lift the truck, some Tacomas develop a front-end vibration. A classic sign of this issue is the following: The truck vibrates in two-wheel drive The vibration disappears when you put it in four-wheel drive When that happens, the driver-side needle bearing is usually the culprit. The fix is replacing that needle bearing with the ECGS bushing from East Coast Gear Supply. It’s one of those upgrades that saves a ton of guesswork later. Because the problem is inconsistent, a lot of people roll the dice and wait to see if the vibration appears after the lift. Personally, it makes way more sense to just install the bushing proactively and never worry about it. How the ECGS bushing install works The process is straightforward once the front end is apart: Remove the axle nut and free the CV from the hub. Pull the CV out of the differential. Catch the small amount of diff oil that drains out. Use the ECGS bearing puller tool to remove the factory needle bearing. Install the new bushing with the correct orientation. Reinstall the CV and refill the differential oil. A couple of details matter here. First, the ECGS puller tool works well, but sometimes the edge needs to be shaved slightly so it slips in behind the bearing more easily. Second, the bushing has an inside and an outside. The bushing material is on the inside, and the steel sleeve is on the outside. When driving it in, the steel section should face outward. Installed properly, it sits basically flush with the surrounding metal. Once that’s done, the CV goes back in, the diff gets topped off, and you’ve eliminated one of the most common Tacoma lift headaches before it even starts. If the truck already has something like an ARB locker, there may already be a bushing in that location, so it’s worth checking before ordering parts. Bulletproofing the Alignment: Cam Tab Welding While the suspension was off, we also welded the cam tabs. This is one of those upgrades that people debate online forever, but in the real world it’s simple: cam tabs bend. They bend on old trucks, and they bend on surprisingly new trucks too. The alignment cams on the lower control arms rely on those tabs to hold alignment. In theory, everything is clamped by friction when torqued properly. That’s true. The problem is what happens when you hit something hard enough to overcome that friction. Then the load goes straight into the tab. Once the tab folds or distorts, your alignment can shift and now you’ve got a mess. Welding a bead behind the tabs reinforces them so they’re much less likely to fold over under impact. It’s a simple, affordable durability mod, and for a Tacoma that’s actually going to see rough roads or trail use, it’s absolutely worth doing. Now, if you want something a little stronger than welding a bead behind the tabs and are willing to spend a few more bucks, then the Total Chaos Cam Tab Gussets are going to be your best bet. Front Suspension: Performance Meets Value with Bilstein 6112s For the front of this build, the choice was the Bilstein 6112, and honestly, this is where the whole value argument really comes together. The 6112 is physically much larger than the factory shock, and that matters for a few reasons. Bigger piston, better damping control A larger piston gives you more room for more sensitive valving. In simple terms, the shock can react better and control motion more effectively than a small stock unit. More oil volume means less fade This is huge. Shocks fade as they get hot. Once they heat up, performance drops and the truck starts feeling bouncy and underdamped. Because the 6112 carries more oil, it resists heat fade much better than the factory suspension. That’s a big reason these feel so good when the pace picks up or the road gets rough for long stretches. Adjustable ride height The 6112 uses a snap-ring style adjustable perch. Move the clip, change the spring seat height, and you change preload. More preload equals more lift. For this Tacoma, the front shocks were set to pair properly with the rear Deaver Stage 1 leaf springs, which provide around 2 inches of lift. The truck already had about an inch of factory rake, and the goal was to reduce that slightly without going dead-level in a weird way. You can correct Taco lean Anyone who has spent time around Tacomas knows about the classic driver-side lean. The gas tank, battery, and driver are all on the same side, so the truck tends to sit lower there. The nice thing with the 6112 setup is you can account for that by setting the passenger side a couple of clips lower than the driver side. That adds a little extra preload to the driver side and helps the truck sit level. Use new top hats, not crusty old ones One of the reasons the 6112 stays reasonably budget friendly is that it doesn’t come preassembled with a top hat. You can reuse the stock top hats, but on a lot of trucks they’re already tired, rusty, or just not worth the hassle. A much better move is using new top hats and assembling the front coilovers with all fresh components. It saves frustration, gives you fresh bushings, and makes the install cleaner overall. Real-world performance matters more than brochure specs The reason I like this setup isn’t because it sounds good on paper. It’s because we’ve actually tested it hard. We’ve jumped these shocks. We’ve hit whoops with them. We’ve run them on a third gen Tacoma in exactly the kind of conditions that expose weak suspension quickly. The Bilstein 6112s flat-out perform. Compared with other options in the same category, they land in a really strong place for price versus results. There may be other shocks that edge them out in one area or another, but once you factor in durability, cost, and the lack of recurring issues, the 6112s are extremely difficult to beat. Rear Suspension: Longevity and Ride Quality with Deaver Stage 1 Leaf Springs & Bilstein 5160s Out back, the truck got Deaver Stage 1 leaf packs, and this is another part of the build where spending money in the right place makes all the difference. There are a few reasons Deaver leaf springs stand out. More leaves, smoother spring progression If you look at a Deaver pack, one thing jumps out right away: there are a lot of leaves in it. That’s not just for show. More, thinner leaves generally flex better and provide a smoother progression through the travel. Instead of a few thick leaves with larger steps in spring rate as the pack compresses, you get a more gradual transition. The result is a rear suspension that feels smoother and more composed both unloaded and while moving through rough terrain. Good construction details matter The packs are wrapped properly, and they use poly bushings that don’t tend to squeak like some other options. That may sound minor until you’ve lived with a noisy leaf pack. At that point, “doesn’t squeak like crazy” becomes a pretty compelling feature. Why Deaver over Old Man Emu leaf springs? One of the criticisms here was specifically aimed at OME rear leaves. The issue is that the second leaf can be too long and too wide in a way that contacts the shackle during cycling. Over time, that can chew into the shackle badly. Add the squeaking issue and it becomes a setup I’m not especially excited about on these trucks. If Deaver is out of budget, there are still good alternatives. Icon and Dobinsons leaf packs were both called out as solid options. But if I’m choosing personally, Deaver gets the nod. Which Deaver stage should you actually buy? This is where a lot of people overbuild the truck. Stage 1: about 2 inches of lift, ideal for lighter setups Stage 2: for moderate added weight, like a canopy and drawer system Stage 3: for seriously heavy loads, like a camper A lot of Tacoma owners jump straight to Stage 3 because they assume any overland gear means they need the heaviest option. Usually they don’t. A canopy and drawers alone are not enough to justify Stage 3. If your truck is relatively light, Stage 1 is the right call. If it carries moderate permanent weight, Stage 2 makes more sense. Save Stage 3 for truly heavy builds. Rear shocks: Keep cool with Bilstein 5160s To match the rear leaf pack, the truck got Bilstein 5160 reservoir shocks. These make a lot of sense on a build like this for a few reasons: They have a durable coating that holds up well in the Pacific Northwest and other harsh climates They’re roughly three-quarters of an inch longer than stock, which helps take advantage of the added rear suspension travel The remote reservoir adds oil volume and cooling capacity That extra oil volume helps with heat management the same way it does up front. Better cooling means more consistent damping when the road gets ugly or the truck is working hard for extended periods. Tire Selection & Alignment: The 32.5" vs. 33" Trade-Off Tire size can make or break a Tacoma build, especially if you’re trying to stay on budget. A lot of people immediately jump to 33s, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But once you do, you usually open the door to extra work like a cab mount chop and additional trimming. That means more time, more money, and more complexity. For this truck, the choice was Falken Wildpeak AT4W 275/70R17, which lands around 32.5 inches. That’s a really smart middle ground. It gives the truck a larger, more capable tire It usually avoids the extra fabrication typically needed for 33s It keeps the build more street friendly It still looks right on the truck If your priority is more aggressive wheeling and you don’t care as much about fuel economy or extra fabrication, then sure, step up to a 33 and do the cab mount chop. But if you want a great tire that usually fits cleanly and keeps costs under control, the Wildpeaks are a killer option. Once everything is put together, it’s always prudent to get a professional alignment, which we did on this 3rd Gen. Why this package is the best value-to-performance Tacoma build What makes this build so good is not just that every part is decent. It’s that the parts work together. You’ve got: Bilstein 6112s up front for improved damping, heat resistance, and adjustable lift Deaver Stage 1 Leaf Springs in the rear for smoother spring progression and about 2 inches of lift Bilstein 5160s out back for more travel and better cooling Falken Wildpeak AT4W 275/70R17 tires for a clean fit without moving into full on cab mount chop territory ECGS bushing and welded cam tabs as preventative upgrades that solve known Tacoma issues That combination gives you a truck that rides better, handles rough terrain better, sits better, and avoids a bunch of common post-lift annoyances. And most importantly, it does all of that while staying under the budget target. Who this build is perfect for? This Tacoma suspension and tire package makes the most sense for someone who wants a truck that can do a bit of everything. It’s ideal if you want: A daily driver that doesn’t feel wrecked by bad suspension choices An overland or adventure setup that still drives properly on pavement A truck that can handle rough roads, trail use, and occasional harder hits A practical build that avoids unnecessary fabrication costs It’s less ideal if your whole goal is building a dedicated crawler or a high-speed desert truck. But that’s not what this package is trying to be. This is the sweet spot build. That’s why it works. The final result Once everything was assembled, aligned, and rolled outside, the result was exactly what this kind of build should be: a Tacoma that looks right, sits right, and delivers a huge jump in performance without blowing the budget. That’s the whole reason to call this the best bang-for-buck Tacoma build under $5K. It isn’t about the biggest lift or the most expensive nameplate. It’s about getting the most out of your money and ending up with a truck that genuinely drives and performs better in the real world. If that’s the goal, this is an incredibly hard package to beat. View the full article
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Where is the best place to start your overland build? It’s a great question! We get asked this all the time, and we have five mods that you should seriously consider upgrading your truck with. Deciding What You Need There are a million different ways you can build your truck, depending on: What you want to do What kind of truck you have What your style is So, every person you ask is going to have a different answer. I’ve been there before myself, building my own truck, and have installed pretty much every mod you can do at this point, for better or worse. I’ve wasted so much time and money on mods that I shouldn’t have bothered with, as well as doing things multiple times just because I didn’t get the products that I should have the first time—so hopefully with that experience I can give you some mods that won’t let you down. Starting Your Journey I hear pretty frequently from many of you guys that you want to start taking your truck offroad—nothing too crazy, just want to stick to some dirt roads, some moderate obstacles or maybe a cross ditch or boulder. You don’t want to spend a ton of money, but you want a truck that’s capable, comfortable, and won’t break down all the time. I say this a lot, but the first thing you should do before you start modifying your truck is just get out on the back roads and do the things you want to do! Your truck—totally stock—will go a surprising amount of places. I see so many people think that they need to do all these mods and upgrades before they can even go out onto a basic dirt road, and that couldn't be further from the truth. A lot of people feel like they can’t actually go wheeling or exploring without a bunch of mods, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I even made a video about the top 5 mods you SHOULDN’T do—that’s how much I believe this! Before I get into the list, if you find these videos helpful at all, a subscription goes a long way! But if you have commitment issues, I’m not offended, just a like or comment is amazing. I love reading what you guys have to say! Anyway, on to the list! Tires The very first mod I would recommend is tires. You want to decide right up front what size and what kind of tire you’re going for. An all-terrain, a mud-terrain, a small tire, a big tire—you want to make that decision right up front. Despite common beliefs, you don’t need a lift to fit larger tires, you just have to be willing to do a little bit of cutting. And realistically, you need to cut whether you put a lift on or not. So you might as well just put the tires you want on it first—that’s what I think, anyway! So up front, you want to decide whether you’re going for an all-terrain or a mud-terrain. I would recommend an all-terrain because they’re way quieter, more fuel efficient, and actually better on the road, which is where 90% of our driving realistically is. If you’re building a straight off-road truck that you don’t drive daily, a mud tire is awesome, but not really necessary. I would also decide what size you want to go with right from the beginning, and then build around that. The bigger the tire you get, the more capable your truck is going to be off-road, but you’re sacrificing fuel efficiency, power, the strength of the components that are attached—so if you go too big, you start needing to do a lot of other work that maybe isn’t necessary for how you’re using your truck. I would say a 33” is a really good compromise tire—it’s just big enough that you can go a lot of places and have good clearance and comfort, but without needing to get into re-gearing and crazy clearance and all that. Re-gearing will help with a 33”, but it’s not necessary. It’s totally manageable without a re-gear. Skids and Sliders I know that this is really two mods, but I always lump them together because they go hand-in-hand. As you start to go off road, you’re going to find yourself in places that aren’t exactly flat. There’s going to be rocks, trees, and all sorts of obstacles. If you’re the type of person who likes to push yourself and push your truck, trust me, you don’t want to be the guy who smashed in your door before you got sliders. It’s pretty embarrassing, and it’s really sad. Skids protect your drivetrain, so they go under your truck. They’ll protect your engine, transmission, transfer case, and that will be great if you’re driving and you don’t see a big boulder, and you smash it—or a log or stick pops up that wants to gouge out your coolant lines or something. They just protect everything so you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Sliders go along the side of your truck and they’re meant to slide on. So as you pivot around boulders or around trees, you don’t have to worry about smashing your doors or anything like that as you’re wheeling through obstacles. Suspension I recently bought my first ever brand new vehicle, and I took it off-road—and I hadn’t remembered how bad stock suspension is off-road. Don’t get me wrong, you can go everywhere with stock suspension, but speed and comfort are not words I would use to describe the experience. I’m not saying you should go out and buy insanely expensive suspension, but what I am saying is that you should be realistic about what your goals are and how you want to use your truck. Use that expectation to buy the right suspension the first time around. There are really solid budget suspension set-ups that are really great for most people. The Bilstein 6112/5160 combo is one of our most popular setups just because it’s so good for the price range. I don’t think there’s anything better in that price range actually. But if you want to start setting harder, going faster, doing more crazy stuff, then it’s not really going to stand up to what you want to do. It’s not going to have the right valving, they’re not rebuildable, all that kind of stuff. So you’re going to want to go with something a little bit better. In my opinion, you should just save up that extra and go to the better setup if that’s what you see yourself doing. If you’re just driving some dirt roads, then the 6112s are totally fine and you’re going to be more than happy. The key is to just be real with what you’re doing, and not do it more than once like I did. I think I’ve installed about six different suspension setups on my truck at this point, and it’s really expensive to do that! Switch Panel One mod I really wish I had done earlier on in my truck modifying journey is the switch panel. When I first started, I thought, “oh, I’m just going to do it the cheap way—these switch panels are expensive.” So I just put switches in. It was a lot of work to feed all the wires in, do all the dash lights, modify the dash to fit all the switches—everything like that. And then, as soon as I wanted to add something else down the road, I had to redo everything. Put the wires back through the firewall, do everything again, find another spot for a switch, and it was really a pain in the butt. I wish that I had just bought a switch panel. You just put one panel through the firewall, you have your switches there, you have eight options, everything just gets wired straight into the fuse panel that you mount somewhere accessible like the engine bay by the battery. It makes everything so much easier, and especially if you’re paying shop labour, you will save money in the long run as you add more things down the road. There are some really nice switch panel options out there. You’ve got the S-Pod or Switch Pro, and those are super high end and they have tons of fancy features like strobes and on/off and momentaries and all this crazy stuff that’s really cool if you want those features. But there’s also more budget options like the rebranded ones that you see everywhere that everyone sells, and they work just as good too. They just don’t have all the fancy features. So depending on what you want to do, if you just need a switch that turns on and off, then those cheaper ones are great. If you want something that has a bit more functionality, then the higher end ones that are like three times the price are really nice. Compressor A compressor is one of those things that’s just so handy that everyone should have one. Especially because airing down your tires is a huge part of your suspension. You can air down and have more traction and a more comfortable ride, and when you’re back on the road and you have to air up, you don’t have to rely on your friends or on finding a gas station or anything like that. You can just air up right there on the side of the road by yourself. Self reliance—it’s amazing! Another great thing about having a compressor is that you can fix a lot of small punctures that you get on a trail. You can just plug it with a tire repair kit and fill it up without even pulling the tire off the truck or pulling out the spare tire. You can also use it to fill up your inflatable floaties for the lake or run lockers. Lockers should definitely be on this list too, but if you bought your truck with overlanding in mind, you probably bought the one with the e-locker option anyway, so you’re already all set! I used to run a tank with my compressor, and honestly, I wouldn’t bother with that again. The tank just filled with water, and you have to be sure you’re draining it all the time (which I never did) and I don’t think it really speeds up the air-up time much, if at all. So I probably wouldn’t bother with the tank again if I were doing it all over again. Conclusion Like I said in the beginning, the most important thing is just to get out and have fun. None of these mods are essential to doing that—you can go exploring and get to a ton of crazy places without anything. They’re just going to enhance the experience. As you get out, you’ll start to figure out where you’re being held back, where your truck’s limitations are, and you can upgrade from there. However, when you do start to modify your truck, try to think further ahead to where you really want your truck to be and then just go straight to that point. Trust me, you can do it in steps, but it costs way more, it’s way more frustrating, and you’re never really totally happy with the performance until you get the thing that you were hoping for in the first place. Just spend the extra three months or whatever saving up to get to the point where you can get what you really want and it will be way better in the long run. Don’t fall into the same trap I have. Just “buy once cry once”—it’s a saying for a reason. I have spent way too much time buying and crying and I still do it. I say that I’ve learned this lesson, but I literally do this all the time trying to go for the cheaper option. And it never works out. I really just need to pound this into my own head. If you want to check out five things you SHOULDN’T buy, then check out this video, or if you want to see what I’m talking about when I say that I’ve literally redone things over and over a million times, I just started rebuilding my truck from the frame up. Like literally, just a frame, and I’m going from there, so check it out here. Hopefully I do everything right this time! Eighth time’s the charm, right? View the full article
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A new suspension lift from Bilstein for our fullsize SUV. View the full article
