Tundra 3" Standard Leveling Kit w/ Rear Air Ride (135-91225)

Tundra 3" Standard Leveling Kit w/ Rear Air Ride (135-91225)Development: Here is my (Justin Lambert) personal experience. We have never made Toyota products, but the all new Tundra came out and I started seeing them on the internet with a little lift and some aggressive wheels and tires, and I instantly thought it was the best looking truck I had ever seen! In my opinion, Toyota nailed it in the looks department once a little aftermarket work is done (lift, wheels, tires). I ordered a new 2023 Tundra Platinum

Development: Here is my (Justin Lambert) personal experience. We have never made Toyota products, but the all new Tundra came out and I started seeing them on the internet with a little lift and some aggressive wheels and tires, and I instantly thought it was the best looking truck I had ever seen! In my opinion, Toyota nailed it in the looks department once a little aftermarket work is done (lift, wheels, tires). I ordered a new 2023 Tundra Platinum 4x4 because I wanted the leather interior and no chrome trim on the exterior. I also opted for the package with electric steps and the Load-Leveling Rear Height Control Air Suspension which I think that is a really neat feature on a half-ton since I will be connecting a small trailer at times, plus the package that included the steps and rear air ride was fairly priced. The truck arrived at the dealership after a few months, I pick the truck up and while heading home I was surprised that it doesn’t ride very good. The rear bottoms out easily even just going in and out of the driveway, the front rides ok but is not impressive. Toyota does have a good amount of rebound control in the front shocks which is good to avoid porpoising , but the ride quality was not that good partly because of the 20” wheels with tires that don’t have a lot of profile. My truck did come with the AVS shocks, which I personally don’t think are very good at least for what I am doing with the truck.

Details

We got to work measuring the truck, which also includes measuring how much droop travel the stock suspension has, and to my surprise, the stock Tundra only had 2-1/2” of droop travel up front, this is another reason the ride quality was not very good. With some more investigation, we determined there was a lot of potential in the suspension of these new Tundra’s and we built a strut spacer for the stock front shocks to get the ride height up 3” over stock, which actually also improved our droop travel to 2-3/4” (although still not enough to my standards) due to geometry changes since the stock amount of suspension travel is shifted downward. A strut spacer will not reduce the droop travel but will increase ride height, while maintaining the stock amount of suspension travel. We avoided a preload spacer since that would have reduced droop travel, and that is a no go when there is already less than optimal droop travel in stock form. Here is another bonus for you potential customers, this amount of front lift and droop travel we were able to achieve without even changing out the upper control arm, the stock upper arm will suffice, but of course we recommend adding the Cognito upper control arm as well for a heavier duty ball joint along with a nice aftermarket look.

The rear bottomed out so easily in stock form, because there just is not much bump travel available on the models that have the rear air ride as the ride height in the rear is a good 1" lower than the coil sprung models, therefore the bump stop was contacting the axle on even small to medium sized bumps and dips. The rear is pretty easy to raise the ride height on these rear air ride trucks, we figured out what we could get away with in rear shock extended length without over stretching the air bag, and that led us to be able to offer up to 2.5” of lift in the rear while maintaining a minimum of 3” of droop travel, improving the amount of suspension travel by 30% in the rear, and that extra lift without the need of adding a bump stop spacer allowed us more bump travel, which greatly improved the rear ride quality as it was not hitting the bump stop so easily any more. The rear ride height is adjustable with the included sensor brackets, I set my truck up very level which was approximately 2” of rear lift to go along with the 3” of front lift.

The wheel and tire I added to my truck (the pictured silver metallic Tundra), is the KMC Wheels KM541 in 18” x 8.5” with +18mm offset, along with the Toyo Open Country R/T Trail in size 285/75R18 (35”x11.5”). This setup gave me exactly what I wanted as far as poke out of the tire, and this size tire is actually slightly taller than a 35x12.5. There was only minimal trimming of the inner fender liner needed and I do not rub tires what so ever. This setup of 3”front/2”rear with these wheels and tires rode way better than stock, now I really liked this truck.

We then brought in a customer/friends truck that was a 2WD 2022 Tundra SR5 with TRD Off-Road package including the red Bilstein shocks and the coil sprung rear end. This truck already had a competitors leveling lift kit on it, I won’t call them by name but it sure seems like everyone with a new Tundra is using them, it is one of those kits that has a 1/2” thick strut spacer along with a taller billet preload collar, and in the rear has a ¾” thick coil spacer. That company has great reviews for this product, and I am about to tell you why I am surprised they did. This type of lift is commonly called a ‘Preload Collar Lift Kit’. This truck did not ride very good, in fact it rode worse than stock in the front. The reason is, this type of kit increases preload while decreasing droop travel, which deteriorates ride quality. This truck had only 1-3/4” of droop travel, no wonder it didn’t ride very good, plus it was only about 1-3/4”-2” taller than stock in the front. We removed the previous lift kit by removing the taller preload collars from the front Bilstein struts/shocks and used the stock collars instead, then removed the ½” thick strut spacer and replaced it with the Cognito strut spacer which is significantly taller. We went ahead and left the rear end alone that already had the 3/4" coil spacers. The result was 2.5” of front lift over stock, and a ride that was night and day better. I believe this truck only yielded 2.5” of front lift rather than 3” like my truck, because it was a 2wd. This truck with the Bilstein shocks rode even better than my truck that had the AVS shocks. Anyone can make parts or have parts made, but it is important to understand suspension if you are going to manufacture and brand suspension parts, please choose a brand that knows what they are doing (wink wink) so you can make sure you are getting value in return for your money.