History

When I bought my 4Runner it had a stock suspension and a 3" bodylift to clear the 33" tires.
I began searching the Net and especially Off-road.com for cheap and easy ways to make suspension improvements.

The rear had the typical 4Runner "saggy butt" and bottomed out often because the saggy rear springs left only an inch or more clearance to the bumpstops. I fixed this by installing some 3" longer than stock shackles from 4 Wheel Parts Wholesalers.  These lifted the rear about 2" and eliminated the bottoming I was experiencing. The saggy springs were still constantly riding on the stiff overload leaf, so the ride was still somewhat harsh. In hindsight, I think add-a-leaves would have worked better than the shackles because they would have given me the lift and also gotten me up off of the overload leaf.

In the front I installed some "ultra-low" upper (extension) bumpstops for a slight increase in front wheel travel.  I also made some swaybar disconnects based on an article on Off-road.com.

ProComp IFS Lift Kit

These modifications made a minor improvement, but I still wanted more wheel travel and more ground clearance.  I also didn't like the bodylift because the shifters didn't work right and I didn't like the look of the frame hanging down.  I considered raising the gas tank and pounding down the fender seams for a little more ground clearance and wheel travel, but I found a good deal on a used lift kit instead.

David Fritzsche sold me a well-used Procomp Stage II 4" lift kit with Rancho RS9117 front shocks and Procomp ES9000 rear shocks.

The installation and instructions were pretty straight forward, but it went slow because I had to mess with bending and grinding my beat up IFS frame brackets and doing the same with the beat up lift kit brackets. A BFH (Big "Friendly" Hammer) and an angle grinder came in very handy for this part. I also had to build a new rear lower control arm (LCA) crossmember because the one in the kit was very bent up from riding the rocks. It took me all of one day and most of the next to finish installing the kit working all by myself with no air tools. The only special tools I needed to buy were a tie rod puller and some large combination wrenches (22 & 24mm, for the spindle adapter nuts and bolts).

Stock Suspension

Suspension
mid-installation

Lift Kit Installed

LCA Crossmember

Lift Kit Tips & Suggestions:

Before you jack up the truck, put a block of wood or a socket in between the upper control arm and bump stop so that the arm doesn't droop. This makes some of the installation steps a little easier.

Buy a tie rod puller if you don't already have one. I bought mine from Post Tool for about $25. The tie rods were the hardest things to get off. I had to soak them with WD40, tighten the puller, whack it with a hammer, tighten some more, whack some more, etc. Another way that some people break these loose is to use 2 sledge hammers. Place the heavier hammer behind the knuckle arm and then smack the arm with the other hammer, pinching it between the two hammers. Supposedly it should pop right out.

The upper ball joints are actually pretty easy to separate from the knuckle if you use this trick-- (assuming the truck is already up on jackstands, etc) remove the cotter pin and loosen the nut on the upper ball joint 1/4" or so. Then use a BFH (I used my stubby 4lb sledge) and give the knuckle/spindle a few good whacks. The knuckle should drop right down onto the nut. It works very well-- I thought that this was going to be the hardest part, but it was actually easy. I got this trick from Barney's archives.

If you buy a used lift kit, make sure you get the small tapered sleeves that go into the stock knuckle to fill up the taper from the ball joint. David forgot about those, so I had to go back and get them. They were still in the knuckles.

You might want to replace the rear LCA crossmember supplied in the kit. David had bent the original one riding the rocks and he made a new one, but that one also bent. I made another one out of 2x2" x 1/4" square tube so it should not bend now (probably overkill, but it was free). I just cut it to length, marked and drilled 4 holes to match the LCA drop brackets, and made a notch to clear the differential using an angle grinder. It hangs down about 3/8" below the LCA drop brackets, but it still has a little more ground clearance than the front crossmember.

Make sure that you install the bolts that hold the LCA drop bracket to the frame with the nut AWAY from the differential or they will interfere (rub, knock, etc.) with the CV axle flanges.

If you want some Rancho RS9000's front shocks for the kit, David found some (RS9117's) that have the dial at the top where its easy to adjust. I don't think its the same one that they normally list for this application, but this one works great.

I found that I didn't need to cut the stock front LCA crossmember mounting tabs to make room for the differential in its dropped position.  This is good because it will be easy to return my 4Runner's suspension to its stock form if I ever decide to.

I had a problem with the swaybar rubbing on the driveshaft and agaist the LCA drop brackets.  For some strange reason the swaybar drop brackets drop the bar 3" and move it forward 1". The 1" forward is what caused the rubbing.  To solve this problem, I modified the brackets so that they dropped the bar straight down. This also brought the swaybar connecting links (disconnects in my case) back to vertical like they should be.

3" Bodylift plus
4" Suspension

4" Suspension plus 1" Bodylift

Conclusion:

Most of these IFS lift kits are pretty much the same, but there are a few things that I don’t like about this particular kit. First of all, the rear LCA crossmember is weak (so I built a new one). Second, the bumpstop drop brackets are part of the LCA drop brackets, and are not easily modified for more travel (I could have gotten around this by simply cutting them off and making my own, but I didn’t. I probably should have, and may end up doing it later). I suppose this one-piece bracket is slightly stronger, but not by enough to matter. Third, this type of kit bolts the LCA drop brackets to the LCA crossmembers (3-piece design). This leaves a lot of room for error (slop) and can possibly twist from side to side from hard use, screwing up the alignment. I think that the kits that use one-piece, welded together LCA drop bracket/crossmember assemblies (like Superlift, and others) are stronger and should hold an alignment much better. Fourth, this 4" kit is supplied with only 3" lift blocks. This is especially bad for already saggy-butt 4Runners like mine. The blocks are tapered to tilt the pinion flange up towards the transmission, so this in combination with my 3" longer than stock shackles (saggy-butt correction) gives a poor driveline angle and lots of vibration. I plan to solve this by replacing the springs and blocks with some Chevy 1/2-ton springs. Basically, I bought this kit because it was cheap and it works, so I’m satisfied.

I like the lift a lot. I have never had the t-bars cranked up or used thicker ones for fear of loosing articulation (too hard to compress to the bumpstops). The lift doesn't get my front differential up any higher, but it lifts just about everything else (especially the gas tank, t-case crossmember and my spare tire). I also like that you can really increase the wheel travel if you make some modifications (see below). With the increased (upward) wheel travel, I bottom out MUCH less, so the off-road ride is much better. Some of this could be the better shocks too. The only down side is that the center of gravity is noticeably higher than with just the body lift (I originally had a 3" BL, now I put on the 4" susp lift and made a 1" BL to replace the 3" BL. So now the body is 2" higher than before, and everything else is 4" higher. Eventually I'll remove the bodylift completely if I can still maintain my front wheel travel w/o rubbing).

I had originally planned on removing the 3" bodylift after installing the ProComp kit. When I did, the exhaust pipe rattled on the floorboards, so as a temporary fix, I made a 1" bodylift. I bought some 1" thick plastic chunks and made 10 body spacers.  I also made my own radiator drop brackets similar to the ones that came with the 3" kit. The only other thing I needed was (10) 4" x 3/8" grade 5 bolts. The install was very easy, especially since I had the practice of recently removing the 3" kit. The only thing different was that I had to modify the radiator slightly to mount the drop brackets. You can see the original 3" lift blocks and the new 1" lift blocks installed on either side of the radiator, just below the bumper in these pictures: 3-inch, 1-inch

Ball Joint Spacers

You can see in this picture that before I put in the spacers I couldn't compress  the suspension to its bumpstops because of binding between the UCA and the spindle adapter

Increasing Wheel Travel with an IFS Lift Kit

I'm guessing that you wouldn't mind increasing your front wheel travel, so here's a good cheap way to do it if you have a 4" IFS lift kit (you may have seen this before, its Scott Ellinger's idea and he now sells a Bolt-on IFS Travel Kit to do it). You're probably already using "ultra-low profile" upper bumpstops, so I'll skip that part. If you read EJ's Superlift review on ORC, you noticed that he had to grind part of the upper control arms or else the spindle adapter would bind on the UCA and reduce wheel travel (this is different than the part where you need to grind a little off the stock knuckle to put the spindle adapter on). To solve this and allow more up travel at the same time, you can install a 1/4" spacer between the UCA and the upper ball joint. Here is a picture of the crude aluminum ones I made. I believe Scotts Ellinger's are steel. Basically, you take out the ball joint, trace its outer edges on some 1/4" metal (no need to curve it in like the ball joint, a trapezoid shape is fine), cut a hole for the "bump," and drill holes for the 4 bolts. Replace the stock studs with (4) 5/16" x 1.5" grade 8 bolts and nuts because they are now too short. This is all pretty cheap and easy to make. I spent about $10 for the bolts and enough aluminium to make 3 sets (I made 2 sets, an extra one to use on my T100 in the future). 

The next step is to shorten the bumpstop drop spacers in the lift kit or use low profile bumpstops to allow for more up-travel (if you have the ProComp Stage 2 kit, you might consider cutting the bumpstop spacers off the LCA drop brackets and making your own). You may need to play with different height spacers so that you don't get too much tire rubbing. I don't have any rubbing at all, but I also have a 1" BL and I only used low-profile bumpstops. 

This mod gave me a lot more up-travel than before but I may still try to make some shorter bumpstop drop brackets later to get even more travel. David Moore did this trick on his IFS lift kit too and has some info on his web page. I don't think he used any ball joint spacers. I didn't use the spacers at first, and this caused me to dent the UCA by the ball joint and I couldn't compress the suspension to the bump stops due to the binding. The spacers give plenty of clearance. You could also say that they increase droop capability by 1/4" too ;-) The extra wheel travel helps a lot to lessen bottoming out and this greatly improves the off road ride. Someday I'm going to use the forklift at work to cross up my truck so I can measure my front wheel travel.