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bhgl
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2024
- Messages
- 379
- Vehicle Year
- 2003
- Engine
- 3.0 V6
- Transmission
- Automatic
Howdy folks,
After spending hours on the forum here, and across the internet to figure out the easiest way to get a mild drop on my '03 B3000 I figured I'd share my experience/reasons installing the kit, and how it performed driving for just over 12000 KMs across Canada for those looking to lower their rangers in the future to determine whether or not this kit is really right for them.
First, here's a quick before and after, apologies for not framing the vehicles the same way, I forgot to do proper ones since I was in a bit of a rush
Before:
After:
Why I lowered the truck, and what I was looking for:
I mainly drive highway miles, and as readers of my main thread know I'm looking to build a cost-effective long distance hauler for road trips, vacations, and general daily driving. To maintain practicality I decided on a 2-3 inch drop, that way I wouldn't have to make any big changes like replacing control arms, the vehicle would be more than high enough clear bad roads, snow, and speed bumps while still improving handling, looks, and fuel economy ever so slightly. I was also hoping that it might improve ride quality, and we'll get to that part soon.
What we installed:
Belltech 900 Coil and Leaf Spring kit
Bilstein 4600 24-196260 Front Shocks, these are standard replacements for coil spring rangers.
Bilstein 4600 24-026758 Rear Shocks, as recommended by 2Krngr in this thread. These are for older Tacoma models, but are shorter in length compared to standard replacements.
ACDelco 45K18011 Professional Front Caster/Camber Cam Kit X2, While the Belltech kit included 4 Cams, we didn't use em, and I'll talk about why when we get into the review.
Dorman 722-001 - Leaf Spring Shackles x2, don't worry I didn't pay that much for these, it was just the quickest listing I could find.
All this went in along other steering and suspension components to refresh the front end, including lower ball joints, sway bar links, and tie rods.
The Result:
The Looks
The mild drop is subtle, and kinda brings the truck back to the old days when people were honest about how much ground clearance they actually needed. I think it really helps the truck look planted and the stance is very even. This is already a small truck, being a Regular Cab, short bed. So parked alongside basically any modern truck it truly looks tiny. Looks are subjective, but I think it helps make the truck look sporty while maintaining a utilitarian edge.
The Ride and Handling
Short answer, improved! Longer answer, between the Bilsteins, newer steering components, and the kit itself it's hard to say what really made the improvement, but I believe it's all three. The truck corners better, and deals with high speed bumps more controllably, shock to the cab has been reduced enough to where I actually prefer the ride over my standard 2005 Toyota Corolla and I don't dread hitting a bad bump. This truck has never had a rear sway bar, so lateral hopping over uneven payment, or washboard gravel is really bad, and it still is, however it's mildly improved which goes a long way to the truck feeling safer and more controllable overall.
Overall the truck feels more confident in the corners, with less leaning, and bumpsteering, while providing a less stiff ride compared the stock setup with no payload. When I first considered lowering the truck, I was actually expecting it to be stiffer after lowering, but was pleasantly surprised when that turned out not to be the case, but there's a specific reason for that which we'll get to below.
The Payload and Practicality
This will come as no surprise to most, but payload is of course reduced by installing lowering leafs in the back. I can't speak for the traditional axle flip/drop shackle method that retains the stock leaf springs, but these specific springs carry less load than stock but a considerable margin. On the trip I carried an extra 50 litres of fuel, around 200 pounds of tools, and maybe 200ish pounds of other gear in the back, plus a spare tire in the carrier, and of course my bed topper. With the main and jerry cans filled with fuel, the truck drooped in the rear, a full load of fuel was the tipping point that would creat a visible sag in the rear, but the effects on ride were obvious more or less throughout the trip. I would estimate a total payload of 800-900 over the rear axle is really all these springs can handle reasonably, compared to the 1200lbs of payload the truck is rated for in this configuration. I have not towed with this setup yet, so I can't really comment, but needless to say your towing capacity will of course be reduced as well.
Practicality wise, I really appreciated having the truck a few inches lower for a few reasons, mainly loading and unloading is made easier. My dog has an easier time jumping in the back. It's easier to lean over the fenders and access hard to reach places under the hood, and it's easier to get in and out of in general. It's nice to be able to see/reach the roof of my cab and cap to strap things down.
What's also nice, is that I can still get under the truck without jacking it up for quick inspections/oil changes. Someone who's got a bit more girth than I do won't fit, but they may still be able to reach the oil pan.
Ground Clearance, general Off-Road notes
While this truck was never going to be an offroad star by any means even before lowering, with 4.10 gears and a limited slip rear differential, it was always surprising just exactly how far this truck would let me go before it was really out of it's depth. To my surprise, that's actually still the case!
While obviously compromised, this truck still sits higher than most passenger vehicles, all wheel drive crossovers included after being lowered. When faced with a 30 degree rocky climb on our trip, the truck easily made it's way, clearing rocks and maintaining traction in the rear even with it's highway tires. It's only trouble was of course on the crest where it did in fact scrape over centre, but otherwise did fine.
To sum this section up, briefly. I wouldn't let a 3 inch drop on these trucks banish you to pavement for the rest of your life, your slightly lowered RWD truck can still get you where you need to go with common sense, and knowing the basics of off roading.
Belltech 900 Leaf and Coil Spring Kit review:
Before we get into detail, I'll summarize my thoughts here. The kit is probably one of the easiest ways to get this level of drop on these trucks, but it comes with a bunch of caveats that you may not realize without doing prior research, and even with some research you may end up a little frustrated with the process/end result. In short, I'd give the kit a 3.5/5 rating overall.
Buying Experience, initial impressions:
Buying the kit here in Canada was a bit of a weird experience, but I given its specialty parts status may not be an uncommon one regardless of where you live. First, the retailer I bought it from TdotPerformance made me confirm my order 3 separate times, and had shipping dates change 3 seperate times. The kit itself arrived in 3 parts, first the coils, then the alignment cams, and then the leaf springs. While all my stuff arrived more or less on time, and the parts were indeed correct, the process itself of constantly checking my email to reconfirm that I even wanted the product and that it did indeed fit my vehicle was frustrating, that's less on Belltech and more so the retailer, but given the specialty parts nature of this kit, it's probably not uncommon to have this experience when buying it.
The parts themselves appear to be of excellent quality, the coils have a nice metallic finish to them, and there were no obvious defects or issues with either of the springs. The leafs blissfully came with bushings pre-installed too! Everything fit and lined up and required no hand massaging to get into place.
Belltech states to have a limited lifetime/unlimited mileage warranty for its parts for manufacturer defects, while this is great to know, I can't comment on how their process works.
My single biggest annoyance with this kit is the fact that while it does come with alignment cams, it comes with precisely 0 hardware. Despite what is stated by Belltech, this feels like more of a miscommunication vs. a genuine attempt at scamming. The contents and photos list the 3 main components, coils, cams and leafs. However, product descriptions do state that the kits includes all the grade 8 hardware you need:
This simply isn't the case, I had to purchase my own alignment kit with bolts and cams to complete the job, and had to reuse/replace bolts to mount the leaf springs in the rear. A real shame because this kits single greatest value is that it's supposed to be the most affordable/simple way to lower your ranger, but in total I ended up having to spend nearly 200$ CAD extra to get the right hardware to make this kit work properly and install safely.
Installation
Installation was pretty smooth all things considered.
Installing the front coils is probably the single biggest headache. but if you're in the lucky position of need to effectively replace every other part on attached to the front knuckle and lower control arm, you can pretty easily drop the lower control arm free from the knuckle while keeping it attached to the frame, throw the spring in with minimal compression, and use a jack to line it up into place, then simply reinstall the knuckle, Tie rods and sway bar links and the job is done with surprisingly less frustration that I thought at first.
The rear leaves install as simply as replacing a set of rear leaves normally, however you will have to raise and lower your rear differential quite a bit while still keeping your drive shaft from slipping too far out. Given that you'll need a different set of rear shocks, you'll need to remove them anyways which gives you a lot more range of motion. I would highly recommend replacing your shackles while you're there versus reusing the old ones, and maybe the hangers themselves if they're looking really bad.
The alignments cams... As I mentioned previously, the kit doesn't include ANY hardware. So you'll need to buy some yourself if adjustable cams haven't already been installed on your truck. The cheapest solution I found was this AC Delco kit, which has an even greater range of adjustment, which is needed. Since I couldn't get the truck to reach anything near a decent alignment just from the string and jackstand method while using them, Thankfully I was able to install the AC Delco 3 degree cams and get the truck to a shop for an alignment.
IMPORTANT! Delete the bump stops attached to the lower control arms entirely, at first I was pretty worried running absolutely 0 bump stop, but after whacking some great potholes and dips at speeds over 100 KpH I haven't had a single issue with overcompression or the lower arm touching the frame.
A note on alignment, it's really hard. You'll need to be able to adjust caster AND camber, and in my experience alignment shops hate working on this setup. I had one guy actually refuse to work on the vehicle because he knew it would take a lot of time. Thankfully a different shop with a younger tech actually took the time to get it sorted.
Important Notes on mechanical stuff:
I had bad U-Joints going into the installation, and while they didn't cause vibrations or any issues beforehand aside from a squeak in reverse, lowering the truck effectively sealed their fate. Just a few hundred KMs afterwards the vibrations started, the squeaking happened in both directions, and after another few hundred KMs a noticeable clunk would happen when getting into drive or reverse. After replacing both u-joints those issues all went away, but it's pretty clear that this kit will result in more stress on your u-joints, meaning you'll need to replace them more often.
Upper ball joint angles: With the alignment kit installed properly, you shouldn't have too extreme of a ball joint angle. I installed the kit with some not-so fresh but not clapped out upper ball joints, and they survived 11000+ Kms of hard driving without splitting the boots or even causing play. Now the angle is more extreme than stock, so you should expect having to replace them at some point sooner compared to stock, but I wouldn't let it worry you too much.
Final thoughts:
All in all, I'm happy with how this turned out, and for my use case it works great. I've come to the conclusion that this kit is probably the best solution for someone looking for a mild drop on a coil sprung truck that's mostly going to be used on the street, and for less truck-like duties. The benefits here really do come from an improved ride, at the expense of a lowered load capacity. It's up to you to determine whether that trade off is right for you.
The other alternative is to get a set of 2 inch drop coils from DJM or once again these 3 inch belltech coils, and an axle flip kit which will give you 5 inches drop but paired with the correct length shackle to raise the vehicle back up to get you level with either of the coil options. This will allow you to retain the existing load capacity, but at the expense of a slightly more complicated install, and a bouncier ride overall.
If you want a mild drop, but still want to retain the practicality, go with an axle flip. If you're okay losing some payload, I think this Belltech kit will give you a more comfortable and confident ride paired with the right shocks.
After spending hours on the forum here, and across the internet to figure out the easiest way to get a mild drop on my '03 B3000 I figured I'd share my experience/reasons installing the kit, and how it performed driving for just over 12000 KMs across Canada for those looking to lower their rangers in the future to determine whether or not this kit is really right for them.
First, here's a quick before and after, apologies for not framing the vehicles the same way, I forgot to do proper ones since I was in a bit of a rush
Before:
After:
Why I lowered the truck, and what I was looking for:
I mainly drive highway miles, and as readers of my main thread know I'm looking to build a cost-effective long distance hauler for road trips, vacations, and general daily driving. To maintain practicality I decided on a 2-3 inch drop, that way I wouldn't have to make any big changes like replacing control arms, the vehicle would be more than high enough clear bad roads, snow, and speed bumps while still improving handling, looks, and fuel economy ever so slightly. I was also hoping that it might improve ride quality, and we'll get to that part soon.
What we installed:
Belltech 900 Coil and Leaf Spring kit
Bilstein 4600 24-196260 Front Shocks, these are standard replacements for coil spring rangers.
Bilstein 4600 24-026758 Rear Shocks, as recommended by 2Krngr in this thread. These are for older Tacoma models, but are shorter in length compared to standard replacements.
ACDelco 45K18011 Professional Front Caster/Camber Cam Kit X2, While the Belltech kit included 4 Cams, we didn't use em, and I'll talk about why when we get into the review.
Dorman 722-001 - Leaf Spring Shackles x2, don't worry I didn't pay that much for these, it was just the quickest listing I could find.
All this went in along other steering and suspension components to refresh the front end, including lower ball joints, sway bar links, and tie rods.
The Result:
The Looks
The mild drop is subtle, and kinda brings the truck back to the old days when people were honest about how much ground clearance they actually needed. I think it really helps the truck look planted and the stance is very even. This is already a small truck, being a Regular Cab, short bed. So parked alongside basically any modern truck it truly looks tiny. Looks are subjective, but I think it helps make the truck look sporty while maintaining a utilitarian edge.
The Ride and Handling
Short answer, improved! Longer answer, between the Bilsteins, newer steering components, and the kit itself it's hard to say what really made the improvement, but I believe it's all three. The truck corners better, and deals with high speed bumps more controllably, shock to the cab has been reduced enough to where I actually prefer the ride over my standard 2005 Toyota Corolla and I don't dread hitting a bad bump. This truck has never had a rear sway bar, so lateral hopping over uneven payment, or washboard gravel is really bad, and it still is, however it's mildly improved which goes a long way to the truck feeling safer and more controllable overall.
Overall the truck feels more confident in the corners, with less leaning, and bumpsteering, while providing a less stiff ride compared the stock setup with no payload. When I first considered lowering the truck, I was actually expecting it to be stiffer after lowering, but was pleasantly surprised when that turned out not to be the case, but there's a specific reason for that which we'll get to below.
The Payload and Practicality
This will come as no surprise to most, but payload is of course reduced by installing lowering leafs in the back. I can't speak for the traditional axle flip/drop shackle method that retains the stock leaf springs, but these specific springs carry less load than stock but a considerable margin. On the trip I carried an extra 50 litres of fuel, around 200 pounds of tools, and maybe 200ish pounds of other gear in the back, plus a spare tire in the carrier, and of course my bed topper. With the main and jerry cans filled with fuel, the truck drooped in the rear, a full load of fuel was the tipping point that would creat a visible sag in the rear, but the effects on ride were obvious more or less throughout the trip. I would estimate a total payload of 800-900 over the rear axle is really all these springs can handle reasonably, compared to the 1200lbs of payload the truck is rated for in this configuration. I have not towed with this setup yet, so I can't really comment, but needless to say your towing capacity will of course be reduced as well.
Practicality wise, I really appreciated having the truck a few inches lower for a few reasons, mainly loading and unloading is made easier. My dog has an easier time jumping in the back. It's easier to lean over the fenders and access hard to reach places under the hood, and it's easier to get in and out of in general. It's nice to be able to see/reach the roof of my cab and cap to strap things down.
What's also nice, is that I can still get under the truck without jacking it up for quick inspections/oil changes. Someone who's got a bit more girth than I do won't fit, but they may still be able to reach the oil pan.
Ground Clearance, general Off-Road notes
While this truck was never going to be an offroad star by any means even before lowering, with 4.10 gears and a limited slip rear differential, it was always surprising just exactly how far this truck would let me go before it was really out of it's depth. To my surprise, that's actually still the case!
While obviously compromised, this truck still sits higher than most passenger vehicles, all wheel drive crossovers included after being lowered. When faced with a 30 degree rocky climb on our trip, the truck easily made it's way, clearing rocks and maintaining traction in the rear even with it's highway tires. It's only trouble was of course on the crest where it did in fact scrape over centre, but otherwise did fine.
To sum this section up, briefly. I wouldn't let a 3 inch drop on these trucks banish you to pavement for the rest of your life, your slightly lowered RWD truck can still get you where you need to go with common sense, and knowing the basics of off roading.
Belltech 900 Leaf and Coil Spring Kit review:
Before we get into detail, I'll summarize my thoughts here. The kit is probably one of the easiest ways to get this level of drop on these trucks, but it comes with a bunch of caveats that you may not realize without doing prior research, and even with some research you may end up a little frustrated with the process/end result. In short, I'd give the kit a 3.5/5 rating overall.
Buying Experience, initial impressions:
Buying the kit here in Canada was a bit of a weird experience, but I given its specialty parts status may not be an uncommon one regardless of where you live. First, the retailer I bought it from TdotPerformance made me confirm my order 3 separate times, and had shipping dates change 3 seperate times. The kit itself arrived in 3 parts, first the coils, then the alignment cams, and then the leaf springs. While all my stuff arrived more or less on time, and the parts were indeed correct, the process itself of constantly checking my email to reconfirm that I even wanted the product and that it did indeed fit my vehicle was frustrating, that's less on Belltech and more so the retailer, but given the specialty parts nature of this kit, it's probably not uncommon to have this experience when buying it.
The parts themselves appear to be of excellent quality, the coils have a nice metallic finish to them, and there were no obvious defects or issues with either of the springs. The leafs blissfully came with bushings pre-installed too! Everything fit and lined up and required no hand massaging to get into place.
Belltech states to have a limited lifetime/unlimited mileage warranty for its parts for manufacturer defects, while this is great to know, I can't comment on how their process works.
My single biggest annoyance with this kit is the fact that while it does come with alignment cams, it comes with precisely 0 hardware. Despite what is stated by Belltech, this feels like more of a miscommunication vs. a genuine attempt at scamming. The contents and photos list the 3 main components, coils, cams and leafs. However, product descriptions do state that the kits includes all the grade 8 hardware you need:
This simply isn't the case, I had to purchase my own alignment kit with bolts and cams to complete the job, and had to reuse/replace bolts to mount the leaf springs in the rear. A real shame because this kits single greatest value is that it's supposed to be the most affordable/simple way to lower your ranger, but in total I ended up having to spend nearly 200$ CAD extra to get the right hardware to make this kit work properly and install safely.
Installation
Installation was pretty smooth all things considered.
Installing the front coils is probably the single biggest headache. but if you're in the lucky position of need to effectively replace every other part on attached to the front knuckle and lower control arm, you can pretty easily drop the lower control arm free from the knuckle while keeping it attached to the frame, throw the spring in with minimal compression, and use a jack to line it up into place, then simply reinstall the knuckle, Tie rods and sway bar links and the job is done with surprisingly less frustration that I thought at first.
The rear leaves install as simply as replacing a set of rear leaves normally, however you will have to raise and lower your rear differential quite a bit while still keeping your drive shaft from slipping too far out. Given that you'll need a different set of rear shocks, you'll need to remove them anyways which gives you a lot more range of motion. I would highly recommend replacing your shackles while you're there versus reusing the old ones, and maybe the hangers themselves if they're looking really bad.
The alignments cams... As I mentioned previously, the kit doesn't include ANY hardware. So you'll need to buy some yourself if adjustable cams haven't already been installed on your truck. The cheapest solution I found was this AC Delco kit, which has an even greater range of adjustment, which is needed. Since I couldn't get the truck to reach anything near a decent alignment just from the string and jackstand method while using them, Thankfully I was able to install the AC Delco 3 degree cams and get the truck to a shop for an alignment.
IMPORTANT! Delete the bump stops attached to the lower control arms entirely, at first I was pretty worried running absolutely 0 bump stop, but after whacking some great potholes and dips at speeds over 100 KpH I haven't had a single issue with overcompression or the lower arm touching the frame.
A note on alignment, it's really hard. You'll need to be able to adjust caster AND camber, and in my experience alignment shops hate working on this setup. I had one guy actually refuse to work on the vehicle because he knew it would take a lot of time. Thankfully a different shop with a younger tech actually took the time to get it sorted.
Important Notes on mechanical stuff:
I had bad U-Joints going into the installation, and while they didn't cause vibrations or any issues beforehand aside from a squeak in reverse, lowering the truck effectively sealed their fate. Just a few hundred KMs afterwards the vibrations started, the squeaking happened in both directions, and after another few hundred KMs a noticeable clunk would happen when getting into drive or reverse. After replacing both u-joints those issues all went away, but it's pretty clear that this kit will result in more stress on your u-joints, meaning you'll need to replace them more often.
Upper ball joint angles: With the alignment kit installed properly, you shouldn't have too extreme of a ball joint angle. I installed the kit with some not-so fresh but not clapped out upper ball joints, and they survived 11000+ Kms of hard driving without splitting the boots or even causing play. Now the angle is more extreme than stock, so you should expect having to replace them at some point sooner compared to stock, but I wouldn't let it worry you too much.
Final thoughts:
All in all, I'm happy with how this turned out, and for my use case it works great. I've come to the conclusion that this kit is probably the best solution for someone looking for a mild drop on a coil sprung truck that's mostly going to be used on the street, and for less truck-like duties. The benefits here really do come from an improved ride, at the expense of a lowered load capacity. It's up to you to determine whether that trade off is right for you.
The other alternative is to get a set of 2 inch drop coils from DJM or once again these 3 inch belltech coils, and an axle flip kit which will give you 5 inches drop but paired with the correct length shackle to raise the vehicle back up to get you level with either of the coil options. This will allow you to retain the existing load capacity, but at the expense of a slightly more complicated install, and a bouncier ride overall.
If you want a mild drop, but still want to retain the practicality, go with an axle flip. If you're okay losing some payload, I think this Belltech kit will give you a more comfortable and confident ride paired with the right shocks.
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