tacogarage
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We went out with the new taco to try and see what it was capable of in stock configuration and I have to say, for the most part, it was great! We didn’t do anything crazy but we did test traction, comfort and clearance pretty well (although we didn’t record it all)
We tried not to beat up the truck too much but the truck did end up breaking…
On our way back we picked up some speed on a flat area of the desert, and without hitting any jumps, rocks, or washboard one of the top hats of out right shock managed to come apart.
These new tacos have no frame mounted bump stops like the 2nd and 3rd Gens. Instead, the shock has an “integrated” bump stop that is simply a piece of foam that bumps the shock body to the shock mount or “top hat” when at full compression.
Our only conclusion is that fatigue or a hard enough hit was able to crack the top hat, a cap holding the bushing for the shock shaft came out and the shaft was able to completely go through the hat. We were unable to locate the cap so we are unsure if the cap broke or simply slipped out after the hat cracked.
In any case the cap was being held in place only by a groove on the hat that might have about 3/32” engagement with the cap, both aluminum parts. The hat seems to be formed over what seems to be a cast cap.
Needless to say, I believe the cap is not enough to take the force a bump stop normally would. I am not exaggerating when I say we DIDN’T HIT anything that would have caused a hard bottoming of the truck.
THIS IS THE 10TH TACOMA I’ve owned and we’ve hit significantly worse things on old stock shocks, without a break. Pot holes on a regular street would have been much worse than anything we did on this run. We’ve worked on hundreds if not thousands of tacos at this point and we’ve yet to see a shock mount break. Mostly because all other tacos did have a frame mounted bump stop I would assume, but that’s exactly the point, if you’re going to make “off road” shocks and integrate the bump stop, the hats better be able to take an impact. These don’t seem to be able to do that. I could be wrong and this could be a fluke but the way it is designed seems to me like a weak point that will hardly be able to take a good impact without a redesign.
We have a clip on this video of where this happened, you can see we picked up some speed but there’s no obvious exact point where this would have happened, like I said, we didn’t hit any crazy terrain while taking that shot.
We tried not to beat up the truck too much but the truck did end up breaking…
On our way back we picked up some speed on a flat area of the desert, and without hitting any jumps, rocks, or washboard one of the top hats of out right shock managed to come apart.
These new tacos have no frame mounted bump stops like the 2nd and 3rd Gens. Instead, the shock has an “integrated” bump stop that is simply a piece of foam that bumps the shock body to the shock mount or “top hat” when at full compression.
Our only conclusion is that fatigue or a hard enough hit was able to crack the top hat, a cap holding the bushing for the shock shaft came out and the shaft was able to completely go through the hat. We were unable to locate the cap so we are unsure if the cap broke or simply slipped out after the hat cracked.
In any case the cap was being held in place only by a groove on the hat that might have about 3/32” engagement with the cap, both aluminum parts. The hat seems to be formed over what seems to be a cast cap.
Needless to say, I believe the cap is not enough to take the force a bump stop normally would. I am not exaggerating when I say we DIDN’T HIT anything that would have caused a hard bottoming of the truck.
THIS IS THE 10TH TACOMA I’ve owned and we’ve hit significantly worse things on old stock shocks, without a break. Pot holes on a regular street would have been much worse than anything we did on this run. We’ve worked on hundreds if not thousands of tacos at this point and we’ve yet to see a shock mount break. Mostly because all other tacos did have a frame mounted bump stop I would assume, but that’s exactly the point, if you’re going to make “off road” shocks and integrate the bump stop, the hats better be able to take an impact. These don’t seem to be able to do that. I could be wrong and this could be a fluke but the way it is designed seems to me like a weak point that will hardly be able to take a good impact without a redesign.
We have a clip on this video of where this happened, you can see we picked up some speed but there’s no obvious exact point where this would have happened, like I said, we didn’t hit any crazy terrain while taking that shot.
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