From Mitsubishi to 2020 Venture

I know lots about Mitsubishi as I built and drove this brand since 1989. Due to continued lack of aftermarket support and blah blah blah, the spouse bought me a 2020 Venture.

Local Offroad Facility recommended the following:

Bilstein 6112 front
Bilstein 5160 rear
1.25” wheel spacers
UCAs
275/70R17 Wildpeaks

All I asked was to level the vehicle out with suspension and not “pucks”.

PO via CarFax just did new Good Year LT265/70R17 @ Toyota dealership with some front end adjustments due to tire wear issues. Is this a thing with 2020 models?

So I don’t require new tires, don’t desire wheel spacers to push tires out to throw rocks and mud along the sides. Is this recommended for “looks”?

So the question is from those that have used the Bilstein combo to “level” their 2020 model. How is the end result, ride and drive properly? Doing the UCAs to allow for alignment caster adjustment to hopefully get it in the green on the print out.

TIA

 

Welcome from Florida

 

Welcome,

The reason spacers were recommended is due to the fact you're running stock wheels. Once you put bigger tires on stock wheels you start getting very close to rubbing on the UCA. People purchase aftermarket wheels with this factored in so no spacer required.

The bilstein lift on the TRD Pro's from '15 to 19'ish? are essentially bilstein 6112 and 5160's. Been running them for six years and they're great. If you stay under ~2" of lift you can get away without aftermarket UCA's. Above that you're going to need them in order to stop bump steer, and wandering. I'm quite partial to the JBA's.

 

Nothing wrong with staying with the stock tires. I plan on lifting mine roughly 1" rear, 2" front, and I plan on keeping the stock size tires.

If you are looking just a slight lift for a level look, also consider the Bilstein 5100. They're still a step above your stock shock, but roughly half the price of the 6112/5160 combo. They're not as high-end, but if you're not going to be out doing a lot of off-roading you probably won't notice the difference.

Good call on skipping the wheel spacers as well. The problem with those is, is yes they may move your tire away from contacting the upper control arm, but on the other hand they make it more likely that your tire will now rub one of the body mounts on the chassis, which is a common issue with these and requires cutting a piece of it off and welding in a patch. Probably not something that you want to do if your main goal is to simply level it.

As far as your question about needing front end work due to tire wear, that can be an issue with any vehicle, as far as I know it's nothing that's a particular issue with 4Runners. Could be that the previous owner whacked a curb pretty good or something and cause the front end to be out of alignment, which could contribute to tire wear.

One thing that can be an issue with these is steering wheel shimmy at highway speeds. Apparently these are extremely sensitive to alignment and proper wheel and tire balance, so if the tire balance is slightly off you'll get a steering wheel shimmy starting around 60 mph. If you don't have that now, you're golden.

All of these points here are widely discussed topics, so if you do a search on any of them you'll find a ton of info on all of this.

Edit: here's a video comparing the two Bilsteins.
https://youtu.be/h5NA6733eqI

 

Welcome from Arizona!

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Welcome and greetings from Minnesota.

 

Welcome from SoCal

 

I was unaware that Mitsubishi still made cars for sale in the US.

welcome!