I know its a little unconventional to do to a Scion but I want to lift mine.
I am looking to buy some property in AZ and its on a long bumpy dirt road. I know I can just buy a truck and be done with it but that would br too easy.
Has anyone had any experience with lifting a Scion?
I know there is a limited amount I can lift it because of the CV joints but I figured thry lower them a couple inches, I should be able to lift it at least that far.
I have seen a lot of lifted XBs but I think they can just use Rav 4 parts.
The rear should be just a set of longer springs and shocks but the front has a single stud on the strut.
I once saw Scion exhibit a first gen XB (which is more Echo than Corolla) where they'd lifted it - several feet - by making a spacer frame between the subframes and body. Looked like it would be completely useless as the monster truck it was pretending to be, but a milder application of the same approach with larger tires might work.
The easiest way would likely be to get some spacers machined for the front struts and rear spring seats and throw in some longer rear shocks so that rear droop isn't drastically affected.
MulletTruck said:
The rear should be just a set of longer springs and shocks but the front has a single stud on the strut.
The single stud is the strut shaft fastening into the upper mount, which then has three studs that fasten into the chassis. The easy button for lifting a strut is to make a spacer that gets sandwiched between the upper mount and the chassis:
If you separate the upper and lower interface bolts, you can also even offset the bolt patterns to make geometry corrections with a design something more like this:
Just to be clear, if ground clearance is not an issue, lifting via spacers will make a 0% improvement on a bumpy road. You still have the same suspension travel, spring rates, shocks, etc.
Now if you combine such a lift with bigger tires/larger sidewalls/smaller wheels you might get some improvement. I suspect tire OD is likely limited as much by vertical clearance as it is by clearance to the subframe/tie-rod/controls with the wheel turned so i don't see much gain there.
Good luck.
Edit: Also something I have seen work is to take the struts from another car and tweak them to work. For example, I know a Forester strut is fairly close in dimensions to a Saturn strut, and will lift it approx 3". They have the same travel and roughly the same spring rates, but basically you can accomplish the lift without spacers.
The not easy button is to body swap it onto something that has the infrastructure to do what you want. What's the wheelbase of a Bronco?
Thanks for the info guys.
Im in no condition and no longer have the tools to do any heavy mods right now snd it looks like the front end will not go willingly so if I get this place I will just trade it in on a more appropriate car.
