March 10 through March 27, 2020: Finalizing Front Up-Travel (continued)Here is a head-on comparison of this same obstacle with my '81 and it's tuned front suspension vs my untuned '16. The lines aren't the same and the dumb Tacoma has a behemoth wheelbase (106" vs 130"), but it's a decent comparison. The Tacoma has both more front up- & down-travel yet to be unlocked. If it wasn't for the rear 3-link, that driver front on the Tacoma would be hanging in the air due in part to a lack of passenger side up-travel.
My plans should put the Tacoma at roughly +5" more up-travel and about the same gain in down-travel than shown here:
Side note as to why I love this section on the 'Con:It's right after a nasty tree & rock squeeze that greatly limits your entrance angle to this section, and if you use a cutting brake such as what I have installed to both my Hilux (hydraulic) and Tacoma (mechanical, info @
Reply #737 onwards), then you can juuuuuust barely make this corner wide-right around the boulder as shown without backing up
and it's a great feeling when you nail the line just right without backing up!Without cutting brakes, most long wheelbase rigs will have to make a 3-point turn to get repositioned for the standard center line shown below. (The large boulder shown above is the rock at far left below, left of the second tree.)
Compare the angles between my Tacoma and the blue 4Runner (Hi Larry!
) -- It's like 120+ degrees of vehicle rotation
If you try to take the corner without backing up you'll add a significant amount of off-camber to the hard-left steep-drop where I've seen people roll. The line shown below was before I had cutting brakes and resulted from a
four-point turn to get the rear end over before the drop. Thank you Amanda for the cool photo!
One more thing is that this corner is made worse due to often needing at least one locker engaged where the 4Runner is at. So you're screwed if you have an automatic locker (Detroit, Grizzly, lunchbox, welded) and you're screwed if your selectable locker won't disengage (Toyota E-Locker, Air Locker, etc). You'll have no choice but to reverse. Therefore, I always challenge myself to try this section with no locker and no backing up which is a lot of fun!
