Toyota Camroad Suspension Upgrade: Fixing the “Boat” Handling

Next up, suspension! I thought I’d booked it in for a full suspension upgrade at King Shocks, however on picking up the vehicle (after hours) they’d only done the rear leafs and a torsion bar wind-up at the front. It drove almost MORE boat like now due to the extra height with stuffed shocks!

They said they’d sort out some shocks for me after a bit of a chat but unfortunately I never heard from them again! Oh well.

I ended up sorting some shocks out myself. I went with Monroe Shock Absorber (Gas Magnum TDT 16-0197) for the front, however the chatbots lied and the rear shocks I ordered didn’t end up fitting.

To fix it, Pedders made me up some custom TrakRyder shocks and she drives like a new vehicle now!

The Wheel and Tyre Headache: Solving the Track Width

I still need to sort out wheels and tyres. We are awaiting a potential collaboration with a tyre manufacturer, and I have spent HOURS upon hours researching to find some rims and tyres that will fit properly.

You see, the rear track is about 28cm narrower than the front, and after giving it a lift I want to widen the track front and rear! But, I want to correct the rear track to bring it at least a little bit more similar to the front..

Which means I need to stagger some more negative offset wheels on the rear compared to the front, while also going a bit more negative on the front.. and there’s NOT a lot of wheels available to do this!

Choosing the Right Rims and Load Rating

When looking at rims, I also have to think about the load rating.

Being a heavier vehicle I can’t just run pretty alloys on it.

Ultimately I think I am going to go with steel 16x7s in 0 offset on the front and -11 offset in the rear (only semi-matching ones I can find).

For spares I will run the same as the front, as this guarantees they still can be run front or rear if needed.

So far I’ve chosen:

Front: King Wheels Mining White

Rear: Dynamic Steel Wheels ROUND HL MINE SPEC White

Tyre Size: Why We Chose 225/75/R16

For tyres, I have 99% decided we will be running 225/75/R16s.

This is almost exactly the maximum size difference I can legally run (which gives me a bit more clearance).

Running 15s might give us slightly nicer ride comfort, and both options have a few all-terrain tyre options available, but ultimately the 16s will get us about 5mm more ride height (and nicer-looking rims) and every mm will count when it comes to trying to get a bit more height out of this thing!

Tyres are also somewhere you really need to look at load rating in a vehicle like this – while there’s a lot in the size above, not many are load rated above 900kg, and we need at least 1000kg (ideally 1200-1400kg!)

We also test fitted some I had lying around (31s and 30s) which both ‘just’ fit, which gives us the confidence that these slightly smaller ones we’ve chosen will fit

Helpful Tools when upgrading your tyres

There’s a pretty awesome website here called tire size to help you compare tire sizes here, which I have found super helpful

It lets you visually and mathematically compare the increase in size, # of revolutions etc.