A first-generation Tacoma – my first-generation Tacoma – is a point of pride. Old reliability, bone-shake roughness – sure, my truck can battle brutality.
It was with pride then that I bit the bullet for a long travel kit. It wasn’t out of some concern for the OEM styling of the vehicle: that it looked proper on the street; or that its clearance met some rescinded Federal standard.
My long travel kit wasn’t for status, although lording my custom brake lines over fellow antagonists of gravity is a well-deserved perk. It was for vanity.
It was my Tacoma telling me it was time to grow up. Or at least my truck’s suspension.
After a particularly brutal drive through the Rockies, my stock suspension did the best it could but every jolt, as it can when things get rough, communicated with unambiguous certainty that my truck hated it. Strongly.
It happened. I was climbing, slowly, coursing up a loose and awkward pitch of loose and brainless shale when one second my truck was ready and the next it was. rude.
Uppity. Like it didn’t want to yield to whatever moronic commands I was forced to give it.
It was then and there that I decided if I was going to be the lunatic monkey that I am doing this off-road thing, then I might as well do it right. And a truck kitted with a long travel kit is the direction of right.
With the length added to my truck, it shouldn’t just run smoother: it should be able to run right over this stuff, period. I switched from loathing to loving the obstacles that put my truck to the test.
What Makes a Superior 1st Gen Tacoma Long Travel Kit?
Picking the right long travel kit is like deciding on a new heart for the truck. It needs to be strong, built to last and ready to break trail in the roughest places I could find.
I picked a Total Chaos kit for its reputation for ruggedness and reliability. I was not only improving my truck, I was ensuring we could go anywhere, anytime.
The swap changed our lives. With the new extended coilovers and upper control arms, the Tacoma could take far more than it ever had before.
The ineffable increase in travel of the suspension gave us far better control of the constant shocks happening on every rocky trail. All of our rides were smoother and far more fun.
Component | Function | Impact on My Driving Experience |
---|---|---|
Extended Coilovers | Increased damping and shock absorption | Transformed rough rides into smooth adventures |
Upgraded Upper Control Arms | Enhanced range of motion and alignment | Improved stability and control on uneven terrains |
Reinforced Tie Rods | Supports increased travel demands | Ensured durability and reduced wear over time |
For me, that choice really came after those miserable drives up in the Rockies. Basically, if you find that your current set-up has you abstaining from trying more difficult trails, if every little bump gives you a violent rattle, run, don’t walk into a dealer and get yourself outfitted for a long travel kit.And, when your truck is properly kitted out, understand that what you will feel is not an upgrade.
Not even a little bit. We’re just talking about a total and complete shift in dynamic.
It’s night and day. I had a friend ask me after the whole procedure if investing in a new, long travel kit was really worth it.
Well, the next trip we took together definitely answered that question. It was a very notorious trail that had defeated us the previous time.
This time around with my new-and-improved Tacoma, it’s night and day. Where before it was a terrifying miraculous survival experience, this time, the truck handled the whole thing like a champ.
To DIY or Not to DIY: Installing Your First Gen Tacoma Long Travel Kit
I elected to install the long travel kit myself because I wanted to know my Tacoma backwards and forwards, every inch of it . this was a giant puzzle and every piece was needed to successfully install the kit. But it felt awesome.
Every piece installed by my hands gave me more confidence in my Tacoma . If people don’t like doing this sort of thing, I recommend getting the backcountry experts to do the work.
That peace of mind can feel as awesome as doing it yourself. Conclusion I can’t recommend upgrading your 1st Gen Tacoma with a long travel kit enough.
Once it’s towering over the trail it gives you more confidence in every way to explore the backcountry. You can go places you could never go before and you will want to go there because the Tacoma’s transformation is simply beautiful.
It all started in typical ‘how-can-this-go-wrong?’ fashion. I purchased my first new truck, a Toyota Tacoma. I immediately upgraded my Tacoma with a new long travel kit (famous last words). I found a fantastic price on a ‘LTK’ (Long Travel Kit. as the cognoscenti like to call ’em) and hit the ‘buy’ button without bothering to actually read the fine print — my second, probably better, humorous mistake. It arrived via truck. It was Christmas in July. I tore open the boxes (alphabetically, because I had gotten in over my head already). Parts were everywhere (here comes the foreshadowing): The instructions were in Swedish. Swedish! I don’t know shit about Swedish beyond what I’ve picked up translating Ikea furniture manuals. This will be immensely useful translating Swedish IRL whilst installing multiple pages’ worth of complex, extremely expensive suspension components.
Nonetheless, eager to ‘wing it’ and overconfident in my mechanical chops, I figured I’d give it a go. I’ll break even and be the master of my mechanical domain! How hard could it be? In an instant, I learned. All weekend long, my garage kept evolving as one of the all-time mechanic’s worst nightmares. I had to buy bolts that I didn’t have. I put the oil separator on upside down. There were a shitload of nuts that had gone places—but places where? By the end of that Sunday, my Tacoma looked more like a lowrider than an off-road vehicle. Its belly was dragging inches off the rocker panels like a giant metallic cat trying to wriggle underneath a sofa. I drove it around the block. It felt like driving over every bump in the road as a mini earthquake.
Nevertheless I wanted to make sure that my hard work wasn’t in vain, so I drove the new rig back to the trail once more. We pulled up to the same spot where Jonny and I had hunkered down and quietly cursed the heavens. My friends looked skeptical – almost upset. Earlier that day they’d bragged at work about the ‘unique’ nature of my plans, but they also all knew just how little money I had in the bank. I could tell they would have rather been going to the movies. ‘Bro, what’s in that box? Grease? Oil?’ Muhammad asked, pointing at my sweaty Spider-Man knapsack. ‘Actually, that’s just salt.’ ‘Sea salt? Me sea salt?’ Finally we turned onto the trail and a minute later Muhammad was shouting ‘Peak a boo’ as I hit the incline. Right away I could tell my DIY skills had perhaps been, shall we say, overrated. The first hill – really it was a bump – was more like Mt Everest to us. ‘Un faut qu’on règle c’que ici,’ Mateo shouted as my teeth rattled and the truck nearly climbed its own rear end. The back end was scraping along the dirt, sparking like my own personal fireworks show. The suspense reached its pitch a couple miles in when we rounded a corner and found a particularly ominous pond. Mateo had christened it ‘Lake Improbable’ but to me it looked more like a death trap. I gunned the engine, the Tacoma lurched up, then we hit the water. It flew up around the sides of the bed and for a split second it seemed actually as though we might make it. My heart was racing. But then the truck sputtered and coughed and died, leaving us stuck in the deepest part of Lake Improbable, which was already proving itself to be about as improbable as its name suggested.