Ok guys, much time has gone by and its time for another installment of SD Yota Garage "How-to" write up. The following information is based on personal research ive spent time gathering and verifying through my own time and means. I will try to be as accurate with the information i have found but note there is always a possibility of a mistake or two.

This time, im using factory Toyota truck options to up the handling and suspension quality on my truck. This will cover part numbers, years, and other vital information needed to find these rare but well worth parts.



Now, heres the rundown on your 2wd 84-88 standard suspension. most of these trucks came with the 18mm torsions and 18mm front sway bars. you can identify this by looking at your sway bar "D" shaped frame bushings. on the side of these bushings you will find a "18" stamped on the rubber bushing. these were by far the smallest sway bars toyota made for these trucks.

Here, you have two options. the first option is really easy to find, locate and install. you can look into any 89-94 toyota pickup, and find the thicker 23mm sway bars and torsions witch will transfer over to your 84-88 truck. the same identification method will apply to finding these 23mm bars as the side of the rubber bushings will have "23" stamped on them. you can pick these up nearly anywhere.

Ok, now this Second option applies to both 84-88 toyota trucks AND 89-94 trucks as well. toyota made a 1 ton truck option through the years starting in 84 all the way through 94. the more commonly made 1 ton trucks were only made in a standard cab long bed. these trucks had varying "1ton" badges and or decals on the sides of the body and tailgate. if yer lucky enough to find these, you can look under the truck, check the bushing number and you will likely see 25 stamped on them. these are the ones you REALLY want. if you find these, grab the sway bars and torsions to install onto your truck. this will be equivalent to the 1 inch (25mm) sway bars made by belltech, hellwig, etc sold for around $180 on summit, and the torsions made by sway-a-way that are now retailing for around $260 if you can find them.

now, the other trucks made with 1ton capacity were the 6 lug dually box, stake bed, and motorhome chassis. these trucks came with a rear 25mm rear sway bar that attached to the rear axle by means of a welded on axle brackets for the bar, and bolt in frame brackets for the end links as shown below.





a little work is required to bolt these on to your non 1ton truck since the provisions for the rear sway bars were never put into the non-dually rear ends. I will be providing a write up later on what to use and how to install these sway bars in these trucks.

Now, for all you wondering "do these sway bars really make that much of a difference?" here is a before and after shot provided by Sean @ Empire Fabrication. top you will notice the body roll with the factory 23mm front bar. below that, you will notice SAME exact entry speed, corner but, with the 1 ton bar now installed. as you can tell, there is significant less body roll on the truck and stays flatter through the turn.




So, for those of you who to replace or buy new 18mm, 23mm, or 25mm front sway bar bushings i will highly suggest you use Energy suspension poly bushing sets as they are inexpensive yet tougher and higher performing than OEM sets. here are the part numbers you will need for the corresponding size sway bars.

***take note the letter at the end will either indicate R for red bushing color, or G for black. example, 8.5103G is black bushing set.***

18mm - 8.5103

23mm - 8.5105

25mm - 8.5104

 

Now if you are like me, i cant just put a grungy, oily, grease covered rusty sway bar in. i ordered up a set of nice new bushings from Energy Suspension (about $23 bucks off ebay) sanded down, and cleaned up this bar, slapped a nice coat of red rustoleum paint for that added 25hp badass goodness look.... and here's how she looks.





now one thing i will mention. since i did lower the truck a considerable amount... i had to adjust the sway bar endlink lengths so to have a nice level angle on the sway bar for it to work at its optimum level. there are many articles on sway bar performance and reasons for doing this. one of such articles can be found on energy suspensions' web site... others are found in offroad magazines and such explaining the need to correct a sway bar angle from dropped or lifted applications.

i personally, cut about an inch off my link center sleeve and noticed a good improvement over stock length. if you take notice, at ride height, the bushings have little to no bind on them from sitting at an awkward angle anymore.

 

NEED MOREEEEE!!!!!

SD YOTA! You the man!

 

Your not going to put that massive bar in the back are you that, s way to big for a empty box and now I am woundering how thick the bell tech bar is I may have to put a caliper to it

 

More rear sway bar induces oversteer. Run two! Lol

 

^ Far from true

for suspension to work well it has to transfer energy aka weight tranfer

bell tec is 20 rear 25 front

 

I have a video of my car on the track there not much sway but enough to keep the weight moving around for best grip

skip to 4.55

VMSC Jan 19 2014 - YouTube

 

That looks fun. Not bad roll. If the back came down more I'm sure it would mellow more.

 

I like the rake look plus the tire's are bit taller in the rear should have when with a 35 instead of 40 series.

I may stiffen the front end up with a djm lower arms so I can crank my T bars even more for a higher spring rate.

but so far I am pretty happy

 

Looks good either way. Ill be parts hunting all this stuff soon for my new 88

 

WOW,
It's funny that I just installed my 1 ton front sway bar on sunday. I was gonna post my install but you covered everything. I had to cut my endlink spacer and get the appropriate length bolt from Lowes. They had the same plated coating bolts that came with the energy suspension kit I bought from autozone. Havent driven it yet and the snow on the ground now means it will not get driven till it thaws.

 

LOL... thanks.

 

I scoped my 88 closer today. Has the small t bars and no sways. I think I know of a good 1 ton for parts. At least some 23mm t bars from a 89-95. Ill post a build thread when I get it home. You'll love it. It's 20 colors, 4wd fenders, 2" body drop and tubbed firewall. It's gonna make my 78 look lifted

 

tubb fire wall ???

 

Yeah. My buddy was basically doing everything to bag and body drop the truck but run a super static drop instead. He lost interest so I picked it up. To not distract this, ill post a build thread soon and link in my sig below.

 

I'm wondering if the 2nd gen 4runner front sway is the same as the pickup? It would open up my options at the bone yard.

Also does anyone have any specifics as to what it takes to mount up a 4runner rear sway? I'd love to have both for some serious corner abilities.

 

the 4runner rear sway bar is an option. i looked into this a while back since it uses a similar axle housing as the truck. these are also an option i will be looking into. the front sway bars however are different. by how much exactly i do not know... but i do know they mount slightly differently and not sure on width.

 

Very good to know. I'll stick with the pickup. There's a 92 at my local picknpull. Waitin for their v-day sale to fulfill my wishlist.

I've installed the aftermarket add on rear sway bars before. Typically drill a few holes in the frame or luck out with an existing hole and use a plate and basically exhaust clamps to hold it on the axle. Seems simple enough. Sway bars being like $27 each that will be an amazing grab for front and rear.

 

I'm need to find a place with corners tight enough to really test my body roll before and after for the 78-back frames. All us guys wanna flatter corner too.

 

My tests generally take place on sweeping on/off ramps. I see what the top speed is before the tires start breaking loose. It's a very consistent test with accurate results thatake your mod time seem incredibly worth it.... Or not. Depending on the mod I suppose.