The Road to a 100 and 2001 build thread (1 Viewer)

[paulbgardner]

Suspension Install

I had grand plans to document every last detail of my install and write up a really great how-to build thread complete with super high res photos taken with my really nice cameras, time lapse videos of the install from various angles, etc etc etc but once again reality hit. Once I got into the meat of the install I just didn't care anymore. I just resorted to using my iPhone when I had a moment to take a photo. My other thought was that there are so many other great how-to threads there isn't much need for another one. I referenced other threads on here through out the entire weekend and pretty much followed step by step through most of them. I hit every snag that everyone has mentioned for any given part of the install (right rear shock removal!) so I don't feel I have much to add since I didn't do much different than others who have written great write ups.

Spring Height Comparison:

I was a little paranoid about the stock spring being taller than the new OME. I knew why the stock was taller (its softer) and I knew that I shouldn't worry but I did anyways. Thankfully I got some real time reassurance from the quick typing folks on this forum. Thanks for the confidence boost needed to move forward. Here is the back end dropped down and the coils and shocks removed.

Getting the coils off was a piece of cake. The only thing to watch out for was that the brake lines and breather hose were taken off the frame so the axle could lower down. Other than that it was straight forward. Now the shocks were another story. I think getting the rear shocks off took most of the afternoon. I was not prepared at all for them being so difficult. After my friend Don and I tried to break the top nut several different ways we turned again to MUD to see if we were completely missing something like maybe a secret lever or hidden access panel with perfect clearance for the tools we had. Well none of that stuff existed; the solution was to just get a bigger wrench (pipe wrench) and go to town on the upper section of the shocks. The pipe wrench worked like a charm and we had both shocks off in a few minutes. Go figure. Should have read up a little more on that. Install the new coils and shocks took no time at all. Here Don is smiling because we finally got past the shocks.

New Coils

The coils went in with no effort whatsoever. It was a little harder getting the stock coils back in with the spacers on top earlier in my build. We had to pry the bottom into place.

Here is the truck with the new rear shocks and coils. The front end has the stock T-bars maxed out. Hadn't touched them yet. Prior to the new stuff in the rear the truck sat dead level with stock coils and 40mm of spacers in the rear. So my fears about the 860's were definitely proved to be unfounded.

 

[paulbgardner]

Diff Drop comparison

The diff drop install went so fast I didn't even have time to take any pictures while we were in process. I did manage to get a few few that show a comparison between the stock diff cross member and the BIOR diff drop.

This photo was taken after I had installed the new cross member but before the jack had been lowered to drop the differential into place. It shows approximately how much the new cross member drops things. Mike says it is 7/8". I didn't bother to get a tape measure out and check.

I really dropped the ball on measuring wheel well heights and how far things were dropping. The only thing I spent time on was the droop measurement later on.

 

[paulbgardner]

Torsion Bars

I was super worried that getting the torsion bars out of the splines was going to be next to impossible. Thankfully this truck was not from the east coast. The install went incredibly smoothly. The reason why it went to smoothly is because of these two threads. My advice for anyone installing or messing with T-bars is to read these two threads over and over and over and over again until you understand every last bit of how they work and how it all comes apart. It is super easy once you know what each part does and what each part is called.

https://forum.ih8mud.com/100-series-cruisers/35588-100-ome-lift-write-up.html#post383741

https://forum.ih8mud.com/100-series-cruisers/491948-those-torsion-bar-questions.html

Everything is in those two threads. Great stuff guys. The best tool was the dead blow hammer. It made getting the torque arm ends off the frame and off the splines cake.

Anchor arm bolt, mounting plate and swivel removed and ready for the new t-bars.

We had the iPad under the truck with us most of the morning reading the instructions and figuring out what all the parts where.

We set the Anchor arms so that there would be as much adjustment range as possible from the 0 state. We then adjusted the adjustment bolt until there was about 3" of droop in the front suspension. There is a little more forward rake right now than I really want and the adjustment is maxed out so I will probably re-index a little later to get another 1/4 to 1/2" out of it. I think I will be happier with just a little more level truck. I will just have to keep an eye on the amount of droop I still have. If I remember correctly I measured 37.75" from the floor to the bottom of the wheel well (running 295/75/R16 tires). I will measure from the center of the wheel another time for those that are interested.

I have been taking a series of photos after each suspension or tire change in the same location outside with my nice camera and overlaying them in Photoshop. The plan is to create a scroll over flash animation that shows the changes. It looks great so far and really illustrates the changes going on with the car. I will post that when it is finished.

 

[paulbgardner]

Phase One Complete

So that is all for now. Phase one of my many phase build is complete. For today I am content with my truck. It is tuned up and ready for some good trails. having the new suspension and 120k service done really gives me the comfort and confidence to go out and tackle some longer and tougher trails with my family in tow. I probably won't add anything else to the truck this year. Next year will usher in Phase two which includes drawers, fridge, sliders and hopefully I can finally get the stereo installed.

 

[Trunk Monkey]

Looks good. Would have been funny if it wouldn't have fit under the pipes post lift.

 

[paulbgardner]

No kidding. That is the only reason I can't go to 315/75R16 tires. I clear those pipes right now by about 2".

 

[paulbgardner]

Re-indexing the Torsion Bars

This evening I decided to finish off the front end of the truck by re-indexing the torsion bars. I wasn't happy with where the truck was sitting after installing the lift. I still needed about 1" more lift in the front to get the stance I wanted while maintaining the right amount of droop. This time I took very detailed notes on how many turns I made and took lots of iPhone photos at each step. I dug through my past notes and was able to find my measurements on the ride height when the truck was stock, prior to any modifications to any part of the suspension. Here are the numbers I had for the stock ride. The measurements are all made from the bottom of the edge of the cap that goes over the center of the wheel.

Front:
Driver - 21.625"
Passenger - 22"

Rear:
Driver - 23"
Passenger - 23"

That is my starting point and comparison for the following steps. After installing the OME860 springs in the rear and OME Torsion Bars up front and then driving the truck around I came up with the following measurements.

Front:
Driver - 23.5"
Passenger - 23.75"

Rear:
Driver - 25"
Passenger - 25"

This equates to about 1.75" of lift in the front and 2.5" of lift in the rear. The droop measurement was somewhere around 3".

So now the fun part; re-indexing. With only 1.75" lift in the front I had a forward rake of around 1.5". I wanted it to be more like 0.5 to 1" depending on how much droop I was getting. It was a bit of a balancing act. From reading around and from conversations I had with folks on here 2.75" in the front seemed to be the most lift you can get or should put on the truck. I was shooting for just under that at 2.5" so I needed to lift the front 1" to reach my goal. The only problem was that I had no more threads left on the torsion bar adjustment bolt.

Prior to doing this job I had read Gunney's awesome instructions a few times and from installing the T-bars in the first place I had a really good understanding of how the bars worked. This helped a lot. I knew exactly what had to be done. First step was to mark the T-bar in its current position relative to the torque arm housing. I didn't have a white out pen so a Sharpie worked just fine.

With the truck lifted in the front so the tires were off the ground and the torsion bars in their neutral state, I unscrewed the torsion bar adjustment bolt until the end of the threads were flush with the top of the pivot. This put the torsion bars in a zero load position.

You can see that the adjustment bolt seat has unseated from the anchor arm and is completely loose. At this point the torsion bar is still connected to the torque arm at the front end.

Next I used a dead blow hammer to knock the torque arm off the spline and towards the rear of the truck. Since I had just installed the torsion bars it was a piece of cake to get the torque arm off. Two taps and it slide right off.

Next I took two long zip ties and daisy chained them together so I could wrap the anchor arm snugly up into it's seat on the frame. Doing this is what puts the anchor arm in a position that maximizes the amount of torsion that can be put in the torsion bars. It gives you the most thread for adjustment and the most downs troke on the anchor arm for lifting the front end. These are both taken from the passengers side. One looking forward and the other rear.

With the anchor arm zip tied in place I used my foot to pull the other end of the anchor arm down to the adjustment bolt seat. Again this is maximizing the adjustment range and in effect rotating the torsion bar while it is in its zero load state.

While hold the anchor arm in place with my foot I aligned the torque arm with the two bolts on the frame and slid it back over the spline. You can see the result of all the adjustments. The torsion bar had been rotated about 3.5 teeth from where I started. PERFECT!

This is what the anchor arm looked like after securing the nuts on the torque arm. The anchor arm is still zip tied to the frame and the adjustment side of the anchor arm is seated very nicely in the adjustment bolt seat and I still have an entire screw full of threads to make adjustments.

The anchor arm and bolt stuck down pretty far but I knew it would have to get threaded in quite a ways to get up to where I wanted the lift. Now the really fun part starts; adjusting and cranking on that nice long screw. So the end of the screw is flush with the top of the pivot. I started out with 15 full turns of the adjustment screw on each side. I started to lower the truck with the jack and realized that it was not enough. I bumped it up 3 more full turns to 18 turns. Still not enough so I went two more turns to 20. 20 full turns of the screw put the front end at 24" with 2.25" of droop. I was shooting for 2.5" so I turned the screw 2.5 more full turns. This brought me up to 24.75" and 1.25" of droop. I overshot. I backed off 1 turn of the screw and that got me to 24.5". This was where I wanted to be. Up until this point I was making identical adjustments to both sides with all my measuring being done on the drivers side.

I measured the passengers side and it was sitting at 25". I backed off the passenger side by 1 turn and that brought me down to 24.75". Backed off 1 more turn and got to 24.5". Exactly where I wanted to be.

I drove the car around the block a few times to let things settle in. The drivers side settled down to 24.25' and the passenger stayed at 24.5". The droop measured to be about 1.75" I think this may be too little so I may drop the truck by half a turn or so to see if I can get to 2" without loosing too much height. That will happen another night. For now I will see how it runs.

So the final numbers after all the round and round:

Front:
Driver - 24.5"
Passenger - 24.625" (don't ask me why it went up)

Rear:
Driver - 25.5"
Passenger - 25.5"

Total lift:
Front - 2.5"
Rear - 2.5"
Forward Rake - 1"
Droop - ~1.75" (need to measure again just to be sure)

This picture shows the drivers side anchor arm position after all is said and done. It moved up quite a bit and is well out of the way.

The following two photos show the driver's side and passenger's side adjustment bolts and how much thread has been used and how much is left. It is about smack in the middle of the adjustment range.

Showing how I measured all the height changes

Final stance

Looks good and feels good. Heading to the Sierras this weekend to test things out.

 

[pfran42]

Wow, great pics to go along with a great write up.

- Sent from a very small supercomputer.

 

[Newps]

I am not sure why people are saying you need to zip tie the adjustment arm up. All you need to do is adjust the anchor arm a few notches (like you did in the photo) insert the anchor arm in the one captured bolt then rotate the anchor arm up it into place and bolt it up. By doing this it will automatically move the rear adjustment arm up and into the correct position. Everything is indexed off the front anchor arm. I tried it both ways and found it to be much easer when the rear arm was free to move around. Hope this makes sense, if anyone has any questions about this process let me know.

 

[paulbgardner]

I am sure there is more than one way to skin this cat. The zip tie approach was SUPER easy for me working alone. I tried something similar to what you said to try and get an extra tooth out of the spline since it is easy to try and shift it over visually but then I had to try to rotate the entire torsion bar from one end. With tying it in place there is zero effort put into trying to align the torque arm. You know for sure it's in the right place and the torque arm just slides effortlessly into place. I honestly could have cared less about the mark I made, I knew I wasn't close to the max potential so I basically just did a hard reset and put things in their max possible positions. I am sure there is a wrong way to do this but there are also several right ways. Whatever gets the truck lifted. I got the entire thing done alone in about an hour.

 

[Newps]

You marking the bar was the right move. Every time I would side mine off to adjust I would have no reference point to go off of. What ever works to get the job done. I just thought I would share my experience since I tried both methods.

 

[TheFuzz]

Agreed on marking the arm - that was the reason I had to re-index the first time around. A yellow paint pen from wally world became my best friend. One tip from my end for those that need to make adjustments; mark the adjustment arm and adjustment bolt, put your 30mm socket on the bolt, and mark the outside of the socket too. This will allow you to count the number of turns on the fly without having to remove the socket to check, and if the socket slips off you can put it back in the exact same place it came off and keep truckin along.

I didn't see the point in zip tying the arms either, but like paul said...more than one way to skin a cat.

 

[paulbgardner]

I think that more than anything the zip tie just acts like an extra set of hands. When I first slid the torque arm back onto the spline I only gained 2 teeth. I knew I could get more so I popped it back off the spline rotated it another 1.5 teeth (just as Newps was suggesting) and slipped it back on, it was kind of trial and error since it is hard to see the marks when the torque arm is backed off the spline. I got to 3.5 teeth. Granted I had to push a little harder and work things around a little more to get the mounting bolts to line up since I was almost putting in a negative torsion on the bar. I knew that the position I was setting things in would get me much more range than where I was previously. Marking the bar was more for demonstrative reasons to post here and just to see for myself that it worked. I had no set goal of 3.5 teeth that I was working to. As a mechanical engineer it was a lot of fun learning how that mechanism works. I feel like I am the master of torsion bars now It was a great workout too. I may start raising and lowering that bolt when I need a workout for my arms.

 

[Newps]

Yea it's funny, after you spent sometime messing with these things you really begin to understand how it all works. The great part is no matter how much you reading you do before hand you are not going to fully understand this system until you get under there and put your hands on it.

 

[paulbgardner]

agreed!

 

[GaFJC]

Fun stuff.

The wife (5-month pregnant) and I have taken our 11-month old off road several times. My 12-year old son and I run local powerlines just about every weekend. Sometimes all three of us, soon to be four, make day trips here and there. You picked the right truck for family fun.

Good luck with your build. Post more pics when you have them.

I agree. I often have my 100 load with kids, the dog and gear. An Old Town canoe and kayak on the roof. The 100 is great with the family and glides along in total comfort.

 

[Sverige]

I see you park in a tight garage. How tall is the lc with the lift & tires?

 

[paulbgardner]

I will have to measure that when I get home. Stay tuned.

 

[2000UZJ]

This makes me want to think you probably need upgraded bumpstops. From the wear marks on the bumpstop it looks like you have crushed the bumpstop half way. Those are like hockey pucks.

 

[paulbgardner]

Stereo Install

I have had my head unit laying around my house for well over a year now and was going to wait until I had a new 5 channel amp and sub to do everything at once. I got sick of not having tunes in the truck so decided to put the head unit and new speakers in using the stock amp for the time being. I was a little apprehensive about working with the stock amp since it wasn't too clear how the wiring was done but it turned out to be pretty easy. Toyota makes it look way more complicated with some ghetto signal splitting for the front component speakers.

Getting the front console and AC controls off the truck was easy. Just pry it back a little and gently pull all around to pop out the clips.

The stereo comes out super easy buy just unscrewing 4 screws around the side mounting breackers.

I took the mounting brackets off the stock HU and put them on the Alpine head unit. For the Alpine HU to fit the metal adapter cage has to be taken off and the front HU trim piece has to be removed. I stripped the Alpine HU down to its barebones arrangements and did a test fit.

In the above photo you can see the metal adapter cage on the bottom left and the HU trim frame on the right.

I bought a Toyota wiring harness that already had RCA plugs on it. That saved a lot of time and effort since there were no cables to crimp. The RCA outs just plugged right into the RCA in on the wire harness. I still had to crimp the power antenna, remote, 12V+ and ignition. No biggie though.

The Alpine HU requires a PAC-TR7 to bypass the parking brake and brake lamp interlock for video and even general setups (really stupid). I wired up the PAC-TR7 just as I was supposed to but it doesn't seem to doing what it is supposed to do. I still can't access the video playback or setup menu options on the HU. I may have a stereo place figure it out.

The HU has a hands free bluetooth option and came with a mic. I decided to put the mic up in the overhead light area. I just drilled a hole in the overhead light trim and then used a Dremel to open the hole up to the size of the mic. The mic cable was run under the headliner right where it meets the front windshield. The wire just tucked in really easily. It then runs down the front pillar, under the steering wheel and up to the stereo. Super quick and easy.

That was the last piece of the puzzle for the headunit before it could be put back in the truck. By the way, the smaller antenna plug for the rear antenna is not needed (Thanks for the quick input on that everyone).

I zip tied all the cables up nice and neat and stuffed it all back in the console. It all turned on the first time, thankfully.

The panel just snapped in place. There was a little bit of a gap ont he left and right of the HU. I just put some electrical tape on the HU for the moments and it filled in the gap. It was just a tiny 1/16" gap that needed some fill.

All in all the Headunit install was super straight forward. Not sure why I didn't do it earlier. I still have to trouble shoot the PAC TR-7, if anyone has worked with it before I would love some info on what you have done. One of the confusing parts of the PAC is that it says that the input trigger wire should be connected to the remote wire on the HU. Thing is on the Alpine unit I have there is the remote for the amp and then there is a separate wire harness that has 2 remote outs, 1 remote in, reverse and M. Cont. I tried the green PAC wire on the amp remote as well as the ones on the separate harness and they all give the required 12v+ in to the PAC, the red LED comes on each time. Not sure where the problem is.