Break n Fix's Armada Mid Offroader Build

[Break n Fix]

Suspension has been changed again. I really needed airbags for towing and am tired of greasing urethane bushings every couple of weeks, so I went back to stock (actually sitting @ ~1" of lift).

Front has Bilstein 5100s 24-197649 on the bottom spring notch w/ moog 81196 springs (3/4" of lift after settling)

Rear has the same fox patrol shocks with moog 81085 springs, firestone 4150 airbags, and 1" aluminum lift spacers from nitrorcteam on ebay. (1" of lift after settling)

The airlines are routed out the bottom of the a arm using 90° press connect fittings to keep them from snagging. They are routed to a Y connector then to a shrader valve mounted within the rear bumper on the driver side.

 

[BorellaFamilyAdventures]

Suspension has been changed again. I really needed airbags for towing and am tired of greasing urethane bushings every couple of weeks, so I went back to stock (actually sitting @ ~1" of lift).

Front has Bilstein 5100s 24-197649 on the bottom spring notch w/ moog 81196 springs (3/4" of lift after settling)

Rear has the same fox patrol shocks with moog 81085 springs, firestone 4150 airbags, and 1" aluminum lift spacers from nitrorcteam on ebay. (1" of lift after settling)

The airlines are routed out the bottom of the a arm using 90° press connect fittings to keep them from snagging. They are routed to a Y connector then to a shrader valve mounted within the rear bumper on the driver side.

This seems like a massive step backwards? Did you change all of this for adding the rear airbags?

 

[Break n Fix]

This seems like a massive step backwards? Did you change all of this for adding the rear airbags?

Yep, I got a trailer and no one makes extended length airbags here in the states. Also I've had to replace 3 front CV's in the past 14 months and I am tired of dealing with it. The drivetrain on these Armada's are pretty weak.

 

[Martinjmpr]

I'm going to have to start following this thread. We recently bought a new house and haven't moved in yet but the garage may be too short for my F-150 to fit. Based on that I'm considering moving to a shorter vehicle and honestly I prefer an SUV body style to a pickup truck anyway.

Biggest concern for me is towing. We tow a small travel trailer (about 4000 lbs fully loaded) but will likely upgrade to at least a 5000 lb trailer next year. The Armada seems to have the power to pull a trailer and "decent enough" off road capacity for fire roads and forest service roads, which is the worst we'd likely be on anyway.

How as the Armada been reliability-wise? The Toyota bigots think they invented reliability but I got tired of paying the "Toyota Tax" more than 8 years ago. How is your MPG when not towing? MPG isn't a huge concern, but for reference my F-150 3.5 EB gets around 17 in mixed driving in the suburbs. Towing rarely better than 10 and that's because we're normally going over a high pass (11,000') since we live in Colorado.

You are right that the Armada seems to offer most of the amenities of a Land Cruiser at a bargain price. That's one of the things that piqued my interest.

 

[Break n Fix]

I'm going to have to start following this thread. We recently bought a new house and haven't moved in yet but the garage may be too short for my F-150 to fit. Based on that I'm considering moving to a shorter vehicle and honestly I prefer an SUV body style to a pickup truck anyway.

Biggest concern for me is towing. We tow a small travel trailer (about 4000 lbs fully loaded) but will likely upgrade to at least a 5000 lb trailer next year. The Armada seems to have the power to pull a trailer and "decent enough" off road capacity for fire roads and forest service roads, which is the worst we'd likely be on anyway.

How as the Armada been reliability-wise? The Toyota bigots think they invented reliability but I got tired of paying the "Toyota Tax" more than 8 years ago. How is your MPG when not towing? MPG isn't a huge concern, but for reference my F-150 3.5 EB gets around 17 in mixed driving in the suburbs. Towing rarely better than 10 and that's because we're normally going over a high pass (11,000') since we live in Colorado.

You are right that the Armada seems to offer most of the amenities of a Land Cruiser at a bargain price. That's one of the things that piqued my interest.

I am on 34" tires (295/70r18) with stock 3.36 gearing. The front bumper made it worse, but as she sits right now I get 15.5mpg averaged. I don't do stop and go since I am more rural, so if you live in suburbia or the city it will be worse, but I got 16.5 with the stock front bumper and 18.5 when it was totally stock. Towing I go from 2k ft at home to 8.5k ft at our normal camping spot and get 11mpg going uphill and 13mpg going down hill with a 3k lb popup trailer. Power is of no concern even with the larger tires and stock gearing.

Relibility has been 100%. I am at 57k miles on my 2019 and still have the oem battery it came with. There hasn't been a single mechanical or electrical part that has been replaced. I did all fluids at 50k, normal 5k oil changes and have only worn out front CV's, but that was due to the lift IMO.

The biggest hit the armada gets is the lack of aftermarket. There is suspension, although very limited, and skid plates. That is about it for offroad parts. Nisstec was selling the dash front bumper that I have, but it seems like they went under and there is no one to source one from now. Dash has said in another post they are bringing parts here before the end of this year, so we will see what comes. I am hoping we have gear options so I can finally put a locker in this thing.

 

[MarcusBrody]

I am on 34" tires (295/70r18) with stock 3.36 gearing. The front bumper made it worse, but as she sits right now I get 15.5mpg averaged. I don't do stop and go since I am more rural, so if you live in suburbia or the city it will be worse, but I got 16.5 with the stock front bumper and 18.5 when it was totally stock. Towing I go from 2k ft at home to 8.5k ft at our normal camping spot and get 11mpg going uphill and 13mpg going down hill with a 3k lb popup trailer. Power is of no concern even with the larger tires and stock gearing.

Relibility has been 100%. I am at 57k miles on my 2019 and still have the oem battery it came with. There hasn't been a single mechanical or electrical part that has been replaced. I did all fluids at 50k, normal 5k oil changes and have only worn out front CV's, but that was due to the lift IMO.

The biggest hit the armada gets is the lack of aftermarket. There is suspension, although very limited, and skid plates. That is about it for offroad parts. Nisstec was selling the dash front bumper that I have, but it seems like they went under and there is no one to source one from now. Dash has said in another post they are bringing parts here before the end of this year, so we will see what comes. I am hoping we have gear options so I can finally put a locker in this thing.

How often do you run into situations where the stock front bumper would have caused issues where the aftermarket one doesn't? Obviously the stock bumper couldn't take the winch, but I'm more curious about approach angles.

 

[Break n Fix]

How often do you run into situations where the stock front bumper would have caused issues where the aftermarket one doesn't? Obviously the stock bumper couldn't take the winch, but I'm more curious about approach angles.

I ripped the stock bumper off on a downed log when I was turning around on a trail. It was peeled off from the passenger fender flare to the center radar mount. I zip tied it to get home and got the dash bumper as soon as I could. Approach angle is laughable in stock form, that front bumper is very low. Great for soccer mom use to get better gas mileage, horrible for the handful of us that off road the family in them.

 

[e61outside]

I'm going to have to start following this thread. We recently bought a new house and haven't moved in yet but the garage may be too short for my F-150 to fit. Based on that I'm considering moving to a shorter vehicle and honestly I prefer an SUV body style to a pickup truck anyway.

Biggest concern for me is towing. We tow a small travel trailer (about 4000 lbs fully loaded) but will likely upgrade to at least a 5000 lb trailer next year. The Armada seems to have the power to pull a trailer and "decent enough" off road capacity for fire roads and forest service roads, which is the worst we'd likely be on anyway.

How as the Armada been reliability-wise? The Toyota bigots think they invented reliability but I got tired of paying the "Toyota Tax" more than 8 years ago. How is your MPG when not towing? MPG isn't a huge concern, but for reference my F-150 3.5 EB gets around 17 in mixed driving in the suburbs. Towing rarely better than 10 and that's because we're normally going over a high pass (11,000') since we live in Colorado.

You are right that the Armada seems to offer most of the amenities of a Land Cruiser at a bargain price. That's one of the things that piqued my interest.

FYI - I've had zero issues towing with my setup. I love it. I towed the Boreas XT a few thousand miles on and off-road. I tow my Nautique shorter distances. All with no airbags. Just the heavy duty, stock-length Lovells springs and Ironman Foam Cell Pros. The boat and trailer is about 7,500 LBs. There is a little sag, but not enough to bottom things out or make the front too light. The pic below is at a weird angle, but the rear only drops about an inch max when hooking up. The correct combination of springs and shocks makes all the difference.

Regarding reliability - Mine is a 2020 with 86k miles. Zero issues except for some damage I did on a more challenging trail, which was totally my fault.

 

[Break n Fix]

I got rid of my coil overs thinking that the extended travel is what was causing my premature CV failures, but even at less than 1" of lift I had another driver CV gone bad. Maybe it's Chinese parts? Probably, but the OEM CV's went bad pretty fast too. Since I had to replace yet another CV (3rd driver replacement now at 57k total miles) I decided to go back to coil overs. This time I went with fox 2.0 titan coil overs (983-02-053) and I got rough country forged aluminum UCAs (83401a) because they have rubber bushings and ball joints and I was done dealing with poly bushings. I had to grease the previous dirt king poly bushing UCAs bi-weekly and it ended up making a huge mess with grease seeping out and they still squeaked; even with synthetic teflon grease meant for poly bushings.

For the rear springs I went back to the King KDRS-303 I had on previously and now don't have the airbags. I think I am going to turn an aluminum puck on my lathe to fit in the lower arm to adjust for the lift increase and use the firestone 4150 airbags I have that are meant for stock ride height. I will update on that when I get to it.

This is the suspension setup for now. If I get another bad CV I will probably drop the $ and get some from RCV, but lift is 1.75" in the front (without adjusting the coil over) and the rear is at 2" from stock.

 

[MarcusBrody]

I got rid of my coil overs thinking that the extended travel is what was causing my premature CV failures, but even at less than 1" of lift I had another driver CV gone bad. Maybe it's Chinese parts? Probably, but the OEM CV's went bad pretty fast too. Since I had to replace yet another CV (3rd driver replacement now at 57k total miles) I decided to go back to coil overs. This time I went with fox 2.0 titan coil overs (983-02-053) and I got rough country forged aluminum UCAs (83401a) because they have rubber bushings and ball joints and I was done dealing with poly bushings. I had to grease the previous dirt king poly bushing UCAs bi-weekly and it ended up making a huge mess with grease seeping out and they still squeaked; even with synthetic teflon grease meant for poly bushings.

For the rear springs I went back to the King KDRS-303 I had on previously and now don't have the airbags. I think I am going to turn an aluminum puck on my lathe to fit in the lower arm to adjust for the lift increase and use the firestone 4150 airbags I have that are meant for stock ride height. I will update on that when I get to it.

This is the suspension setup for now. If I get another bad CV I will probably drop the $ and get some from RCV, but lift is 1.75" in the front (without adjusting the coil over) and the rear is at 2" from stock.

Dpes RCV make them for the Y62 Armada? I see Y61 Patrol CV sets on their website, but not Y62.

 

[Break n Fix]

Dpes RCV make them for the Y62 Armada? I see Y61 Patrol CV sets on their website, but not Y62.

They can make anything custom, but ruggedrocks has them listed for the R51 pathfinder with a r180 diff. Those should be the same as what the 2nd gen armada would need.

 

[Break n Fix]

Here is a shot of how it sits right now.

 

[Break n Fix]

Well I put the Armada to a serious test and drove the Lake Pleasant to Crown King Trail in AZ and it made it with the help of a group of Jeeps I ran into. Without them to spot and give me 2 yanks I would've had to turn around. It was a little wet and with my lack of clearance and lockers, there were 2 obstacles that it would not make it over on its own power. Even 2 gladiators had a hard time; lots of frame scraping and running board and bumper bending, but we finished the trail and I think I'm probably the only Armada to have done it. Worth the experience and the Armada was used above its capabilities, but it did perform.

Time to make some custom rock sliders...

 

[llamalander]

Nice! you know how to break 'em! Do they make lockers for the Armada?
Aftermarkets are pretty rare for the Frontier, my hat is off to your dedication to the platform.
I keep on being surprised by the things that don't break my truck-

 

[Break n Fix]

Nice! you know how to break 'em! Do they make lockers for the Armada?
Aftermarkets are pretty rare for the Frontier, my hat is off to your dedication to the platform.
I keep on being surprised by the things that don't break my truck-

ARB makes lockers for the front and rear, but the problem is they require 3.54 gears and the Armada comes with 3.36. There are no aftermarket gears available for these, so I would have to source them from a salvage yard overseas where some pathfinder models came with 3.54's. By the time I did all that, I could probably buy a WJ Cherokee and build it for the same $ as it would cost just to put lockers on the Armada. And it would be better for the more extreme stuff the Armada just isn't meant to do. That is probably what I am going to end up doing because I hate SxS and need to fit a family of 4 and our stuff in it. XJs are rising in price and the WJ or a Disco 2 seems like a good alternative.

This Armada isn't going anywhere, but it is stretching in its capability with what I want it to do. It is good for mild off-roading, but not when it comes to rocks or mud.