Well folks, summer is finally drawing to a close now, with several parts of the country already hitting colder weather, other parts are still experiencing tropical storms, hurricanes, and terrible wildfires. This year has been a real roller coaster ride so far, and even though most of us have been home for the majority of the year, it’s great to see that so many of you were able to make the best of it so far and get out and do some exploring with your 4×4’s.
Please don’t forget to tag #exitoffroad in all your adventures, or send photos directly to our Instagram or Facebook, lookup @exitoffrod and we’d be more than happy to repost your awesome outdoor photos to inspire others to also plan their trips.
This fall should experience a slow down in sales as everyone is getting over their vacations, kids are back online to school (or some in person), and winter is coming!! Exit Offroad is looking for some great new products to offer to all of you soon, so keep checking back on the page as often as you can, and keep a lookout on the front page to see what’s new and exciting!!
As of June 1st, 2020, Exit Offroad is a dealer for Dirt King Fabrication products, all American made products out of San Diego, California. Dirt King specializes in super strong upgrades to compliment the full line of Dobinsons Suspension. Super beefy Performance Lower Control arms, multi-option Upper Control Arms, and a range of other gear are all being added to site right now, and also onto all the full suspension kit pages so that you don’t need to leave the one page to add everything you want to your full suspension order. Always smashing your lower control arms into rocks, stumps, ruts and junk while offroad? Time for a massive strength upgrade by adding new arms to your IFS vehicle to be able to handle more abuse and not worry about cracking, bending, or breaking your factory arms.
Check out Dirt King Fabrication in this video:
To get going, we’re starting with adding all of the Dirt King products for the Toyota Tundra 2nd Gen, Toyota Tacoma 2nd and 3rd Gen, Toyota 4Runner 4th and 5th Gen, Toyota FJ Cruiser, Lexus GX470, Lexus GX460, Prado 120, and Prado 150. To keep it all neatly organized, I’ve made a separate page to see all of the Dirt King Products that Exit Offroad offers, follow the link here:
It’s hard to portray just how great the quality and finish is of these products until you see them in person, but hopefully you’ll appreciate it in the photos attached to each product page. I’m super excited to offer these add-ons to the site!!
Hey everyone, thanks for reading. Just recently I helped a friend install his new Dobinsons suspension onto his newly acquired 2018 Toyota 4Runner SR5 2×4 model. He wanted to pick up the front end a bit to help level out the vehicle and also to add a better spring rate to the rear, allowing him to support the full vehicle better. His 4Runner has a 3rd row seat that is regularly used to take the full load of 7 people in the SUV.
Before I lose you, this same installation applies to these vehicles:
4th Gen Toyota 4Runner 2003 to 2009
5th Gen Toyota 4Runner 2010 to 2020+
Lexus GX470 2003 to 2009
Lexus GX460 2010 to 2020+
Toyota Prado 120
Toyota Prado 150
Toyota FJ Cruiser (all years)
Now I’ve worked on many different Toyota’s and 4×4’s over the years, and this is a method of installation that goes back to my old Suzuki 4×4 days with Sidekicks, Trackers, Vitara’s and Grand Vitara’s. The absolute easiest method to install the front struts is to swing the lower control arm down and out of the way to easily remove the strut assembly without having to disconnect hardly anything. 2 lower ball joint bolts per side, loosen the lower control arm bolts at the cams, per side, and then undo the strut top 3 nuts and the main lower bolt. This leaves the UCA’s untouched, the sway bar links in place set to factory torque, the brake and ABS lines in place, and all the steering links also untouched. When possible, it is most definitely better to remove the least amount of bolts necessary, because if you put something back together wrong or not tight enough, you can run into other issues later.
In this video I try to describe as clearly as possible what steps it takes to change out the full suspension (front strut assemblies, rear coils and rear shocks) in under 3 hours. Granted there were 3 of us on site, me being the one who knows the steps and guiding the other 2 while being the cameraman, you need to know that the 2 guys doing the majority of the work have never worked on a Toyota or a 4×4 like this before. Plus we ran into a couple of hiccups by not realizing we had to take down the front skid plate at first (the last 2 I worked on already had those removed) and in the rear I forgot to disconnect the sway bar, as the last 2 I worked on had KDSS with a different sway bar system that was already undone and out of the way). Those slight delays probably added maybe 20 minutes, so we would have been done in 2.5 hours from start to finish, with water breaks, a few chats, and taking our time with hand tools. You’re still wondering how this is possible? We ordered the front struts, coils and new top mounts fully pre-assembled. A professional with the correct strut spring compressor can do that job in a matter of minutes, but to do it at home is very time consuming, dangerous, and really not worth the effort when you can just pay to have it done before the parts are shipped to you, and bolt them in like my video shows.
So please check out this video and be sure to hit like on it. So many people these days are doing their own installation at home and so many people get bad advice to disconnect all sorts of things that really aren’t needed, so hopefully if you see someone that needs help, you can share this video and help guide them for a simpler method.
Hey everyone!! Geez, what a crazy couple of weeks it’s been. You already know what’s going on, so I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. I’ve been trying to set aside the time to make a whole series of videos to put up on my YouTube channel, and this has finally been the week for that!! I’ve probably got another 20 products I want to film, and other ideas I have as well for some really informative content to put up on YouTube.
I’ve had my own YouTube account now since 2006, and I always used it to chronicle the offroading I would do with my Suzuki club in Washington State that I used to be fully involved with, called WAZUKS, so you’ll see a lot of older videos on the channel still. The video quality back then was really quite poor and the compression of them was really bad, but still, I don’t want to remove any of them as it brings back great memories and also there were some really fun clips in there too. Also, I used to travel A LOT to Central and South America for work, so I’d take side trips when and where I could and video as much of that as well. Be sure to check out the videos in Guyana. It’s incredible.
That brings me to today and the videos I’ve taken this week. They’re all Dobinsons related so far, so I’ve put together a playlist of basically product unboxing, what the item is, why you’d even use it, and how to use it or how to install it. This information gets asked of me all the time, and video is definitely the best format to show it to those who want to know.
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