Timbren Suspension Enhancement System - Coil Spring Suspension - Rear Axle

Video Transcript for Timbren Rear Coil Spring Suspension Enhancement System Installation - 2022 Toyota RAV4

Hi, everyone, Aiden here with etrailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the SES Coil Enhancement System from Timbren, and we're gonna be showing it on our 2022 Toyota RAV4. We already have ours installed, and the first thing I want to do is take it through our test course and drive around with it and just see how it performs without any weight on the RAV4. Most of the time, that's probably how you're gonna be driving anyway and you don't want it to affect the ride quality of the vehicle without any weight in it. So we'll see how it does. So for the first part of our test course, we've got a series of speed bumps, both alternating and two together.

So we've bounced evenly over it. And right away what I'm feeling is the vehicle's definitely riding a little bit stiffer. You can tell that we've got something helping the suspension back there, but it does stiffen it. So the ride quality isn't as nice, but it's not crazy. It's not anything jarring that destroys the experience for me, and that overall say it's not too bad.

The vehicle corrects itself and goes back to normal pretty quickly. Now in this next part, we're gonna take some quick side to side turns, and here's where I'm feeling a big difference. It helps with the body roll quite a bit on the vehicle and makes it feel less top-heavy. So if you ever did need to make some evasive maneuvers on the road or just take a turn a little too sharp, I think it's gonna offer a lot of support there. So now that we've established a baseline of how it performs with no weight, we've got a cargo carrier with about 150 pounds of concrete loaded up.

We're gonna drive it around again and see what the Timbrens do. So we'll go over the same part of our test course now, only this time with the weight in the back. Right outta the gate, I'd say it feels pretty comparable. If anything though, the ride feels a bit less stiff now. That extra weight that we've got in the back that's bringing the suspension down a little bit is actually a bit more appropriate for the enhancement that we've got installed.

So the overall handling feels similar to before we had anything installed and had no weight in the back. And as we approach the slalom, we'll go side to side again. And much like before, it feels like we've got a little bit of extra support, but it's also just feeling like it's driving normal. I don't feel like it's as stiff as it was when there was no weight in the back, but that's not a bad thing. It doesn't feel like it's swaying more than I would expect it to. So I'd say that the Temperas are doing their job. So I've got my opinions on how the RAV4 handled, but we have Jackie here with us today, and this is actually her RAV4. So Jackie, as someone that's driven this car around a lot day to day and knowing how it feels when you drive it after going around with the Timbrens on, how did that experience feel different for you Actually, I think that it felt just slightly more harsh, but I could see the benefit to having more weight on the back and it not being that way. And it did help with the bobble back and forth when taking tight corners. Yeah, that's the area I felt the biggest difference too. And the thing I wondered is with feeling that a bit more harshness, if you we're using this for towing every now and again between towing, is it enough of a difference that you would just not wanna bother with it at all Or is it not too bad that you could overlook it I would say it's not too bad overall. I would be easily able to overlook it. That's good to know. Thank you. Thank you. Now that we've seen how it performed and how it felt on our test course, we can take it in and get a better look at it. Now the first thing you need to know with this is that it's not gonna increase your RAV4's weight capacity. Whatever your vehicle can handle, whether you're towing a small trailer or loading up the hitch, it's still gonna be able to handle that. This is only designed to just increase the comfort level when it is loaded up, not increase the weight capacity. So just make sure you're not overloading your vehicle just because you have this installed now. So the way this is designed, it's going to be a pretty thick rubber compound and it's gonna provide progressive support, basically, limiting the amount of movement you have in your coil springs. And while that might sound like a bad thing, it's really just gonna stiffen the suspension. So imagine you've got a load in the back of your RAV4, you're towing a small trailer, you hit a bump, that spring is going to compress. Where now, with this spring, you can see right there we've got a giant block of rubber sitting in between the coils, limiting how much it can compress. So while it's going to stiffen the suspension, it's also going to help push it back a lot quicker because we get this progressive support. The more it compresses, the stiffer it becomes. And what that'll translate to on road is better support for things like bumps. So if you did hit a bump with a trailer, it's going to return the vehicle back to a normal ride a lot quicker. And because these operate independently from one another, if we're taking a hard turn, one side compresses because we're experiencing some body roll, it'll push it back and level the vehicle out, again, just a little bit quicker. And the nice thing about this is it's a really simple install process. Really, besides jack stands and the jack to lift the vehicle up, you don't need any tools. Just grab some soapy water and you'll be able to slide these into the coil springs pretty easily. Now to start off our installation, we are on a lift, but you could do this at home without a lift. The process itself is pretty straightforward, but essentially you wanna park on level ground, chuck the front wheels, and jack the rear of the vehicle up and put some jack stands under there so it's safe in case something falls. But you really just want that coil spring on the rear of the vehicle to stretch out and expand a bit. So we can take the suspension enhancement, and you first wanna identify the top and the bottom. An easy way to do that is to just find the Timbren logo and have that facing right side up, but you can also just look to the inside edge. The bottom groove is going to be significantly deeper than the top one. So that again will help us determine orientation. And to help the install go a bit more smoothly, especially fresh outta the packaging, just start to manipulate it a bit, try to stretch it out. It's rubber so you can get this to be a bit looser and get yourself a bottle of soapy water and just spray this thing down. This is gonna help this slide over the coil spring on the vehicle and just ease up the installation process because it can be a bit stubborn as you start to get it attached. So I wish I could say there's a super special trick to get this to go on easily, but really you're just gonna have to fight with it a bit. Try to feed that bottom section on first. I'll try to keep my hands out of the way as best I can, but this is gonna be one of those things that you might just be fighting with for a bit as you feed this around the spring and get it to seat. (door thudding) (metal rattling) So if you can get that around, we're gonna try to push this lip to the inside edge and to start to work our way around. (rubber thuds) So we can kind of feel it seat into place once it does. And really the corners are the last places that you have to fight with. Once the middle is in, that's the last bit that we need to worry about. And for the last bottom corner, we didn't catch it on camera, but I just twisted this, and the last bit that wasn't seated actually slid in. But from there, you can tell it's seated properly because since the coil's expanded right now, we've got a fair amount of wiggle room up and down. So we'll just repeat that process on the other side, lower it down, and it should be held captive in that coil spring. The final thing we need to do though before lowering it is just spin this around until it's as close to the center of your coil spring as possible. Right about there is looking pretty good. And it's the same on the other side for us. And as we're lowering ours down, we can keep an eye on those coils and just make sure that nothing becomes unseated, but we should be able to see, it actually starts to fit a little bit nicer around that coil spring and have a little bit less of a gap. (metal clanking) And that'll do it for our look at and installation of the SES Coil Enhancers from Timbren on our 2022 Toyota RAV4. Thanks for watching.