Deaver Spring Manufacturing was established in 1892, and has a rich history in the off-road racing world and with the Southern California OHV community. Their recent successes with super duty ford and Toyota Tacoma trucks have brought them much deserved recognition and popularity.

There are major benefits of using a custom spring manufacturer to build your lift springs. Here are a few of the most significant advantages:

1. The springs are custom tuned to your needs: I wanted a spring set that could handle a 600-800 pound rear axle load, and still provide a smooth ride and flexibility through rough terrain. Mass produced spring sets are tuned for the "average" driver, and are also designed to minimize manufacturing costs. Deaver Springs spent the time necessary to understand my application and recommend a spring for my vehicle.

2. Quality: The manufacturing quality of the Deaver springs are exceptional. This is evident in the quality (and temper) of steel used (american made spring steel), the constant radius rolled arch, anti friction pads and chamfered spring ends. The springs come painted and include all polyurethane bushings and new, oversized u-bots.

3. Application Specific Tuning: Deaver spends a great amount of time understanding an application that their springs will be used for. On their Tacoma springs, Deaver positions the spring center bolt 3/4" closer to the front of the vehicle, centering the axle more accurately at full compression. That minor adjustment reduces most of the rubbing at the rear of the wheel well found with the stock springs. Deaver also makes every attempt to maximize the ride quality and flexibility of the suspension by not using tight spring clamps.

4. Safety: The Deaver packs feature a full length second leaf with military wrap on the forward eye.

The Deaver spring kit comes with a set of springs, poly bushings, bushing sleeves and new ubolts.

Next, I installed the cadmium plated sleeves into the bushings. These sleeves prevent damage to the bushings as the suspension cycles. I used a rubber mallet to install the sleeves into the bushings.

Now that the spring is free from the forward mount and the axle, the last step is to separate the spring shackles. This is actually the most difficult part of removing the springs. The job is made easier by removing the spare tire.

Installing the new springs:

I like to install the bolt in the forward eye first, which makes controlling the spring easier. Then install the rearward end of the spring onto to shackle. This is somewhat challenging, as the bushing will want to slide out of the springs. I used a flat faced crowbar to hold the bushing in place and slide the spring onto the shackle.

Next, I installed the factory shackle. This can be somewhat difficult as the bushing sleeve wants to slide out of the bushing. Really not too bad though, and only takes a few minutes.

Now the u-bolts need to be installed and torqued (65 lbs in this application). NEVER reuse old u-bolts. The treads are stretched (u-bolt threads are rolled, not cut/machined) during the torquing process and cannot retain tension properly if reused.

All of the suspension bolts should be retorqued at 50 and 500 miles.

One of my biggest complaints with the stock tacoma was the factory rear suspension. I had horrible axle wrap and the vehicle rode so poorly off-road that it was exhausting for long trails.

The Deaver springs remedied all of those issues, and provided a payload capacity of 600-800 lbs. over the rear axle while maintaining the required 2" lift height. With that load, they ride like a Lexus! I could not be happier.