Dirt King Aluminum Front Skid Plate - Testing Photos | 4th Gen Tacoma Forum

Tacoma_bs24 · 2026-04-17T17:32:53+00:00

Been digging into 4th gen Tacoma steering and hit a pretty annoying limitation. The inner tie rod isn’t serviceable. You can’t buy it separately. If it fails, you’re buying a full rack. No workaround. Came across this from Solo Motorsports: https://solomotorsports.com/shop/parts/toyota-parts/steering-toyota-parts/toyota-inner-heim-and-clevis-steering-upgrade/ It converts the inner to a heim with a clevis at the rack. Looks strong, but it requires drilling the knuckle and going double shear, so you’re committing to a permanent change. Solo is currently confirming fitment for the 4th gen for me, so this might actually be a viable option soon. That’s where I’m stuck. You’re upgrading strength, but adding complexity and maintenance. Heims don’t love dirt long term, and they’re not exactly forgiving. So now it feels like: OEM is simple but limited Solo is stronger but more involved End result is still the same if something goes wrong I haven’t seen much actual data on 4th gen rack failures yet, so I don’t know if this is a real problem or just a theoretical one. Curious if anyone is running this on a non long travel setup and how it’s holding up. Is this a smart upgrade or just overbuilding a system that isn’t actually failing yet?

rustytaco

Administrator

Staff member

Feb 19, 2025

Dirt King is working on a bunch of 4G products. This is one of them, their (I believe), aluminum connector skid plate. Replaces the dinky factory one. Looks super seamless and a simple install.

You can also see their performance lower control arm in the background.

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