I've got a 2005 GX470. One of the previous owners removed air ride stuff for an unknown coil conversion. It is a daily driver with stock tires(265/65r17). It does ZERO offroading since I've got a handful of 70s Land Cruisers to handle real wheeling. It gets to deal with winter snow and ice roads that are plowed at times. Otherwise it deals with curvy mountain roads with occasional 6k pound towing.

I'll preface my question with I took a look in the following thread:
Air Suspension Problems or Questions - Page 23 - ClubLexus - Lexus Forum Discussion
I didn't find exactly what I was looking for. So I'm hoping can help me out.

I am unhappy with the ride height. Under the frame is ~14" and the rear wheel opening is ~8". Here is handy picture showing wheel well gap:



If we use this picture from the above thread:

I would like my ride height to look more like the low position and not what appears to be a 2" lift. So my question is quite simple:
How do I accomplish this?

Every shop that deals in GX470s that I've contacted have been no help on zero or negative lift coils. Is there a known 1" drop spring for front/rear?

If not, are there any quality airline replacements(braided)? Mine didn't look in great shape nor complete. And if I'm buying replacements, I'd rather go a sturdier replacement.

From reading various threads, the impression I got is OEM is only way to go for air parts. Was that still the case? Yes, I realize I'll spend a small fortune but I'll do it to get look/use I want.

 

With the air suspension, the Low and High settings are temporary. Once you exceed a few MPH, the suspension will revert to Normal height. That said, your ride height does seem high, but will need a full side picture to really see what's the stance is looking like. Here's a generic GX470 shot, as you can see, front/rear are about even:

 

Thanks for the description of how the air ride and height stuff works. It basically tells me that I don't want to take time/money going that route.

Here is a chop of a picture I had handy. I will see about getting a better picture that includes the front when I'm not burning up

Based upon your picture, it feels like I've got a two inch lift spring. I put the red line to follow the door line. In your picture, it looks like ~2" of tire above the line while mine looks almost matched.

That 2" also lines up with the feeling that most air bag replacement kits do 2" lift. So it looks like I need to find a stock(zero lift) spring set or even a one inch drop set. Yes, dropping 1" over stock sounds odd but here is one of my wheelers:

Just a mildly build FJ55 on 35s.

 

I kept a note of the wheel well gaps before installing my lift, from the center of the wheel to the bottom of the flare was 20" front, 21.5-22" rear.

There's some rake stock, and you need to bring the rear up about 1" to level.

 

Measure from the center cap on the wheel to the fender lip and you won't include tire sidewall height.
So far as going back to air springs - I think the main reason would be because you tow and want the auto-leveling (no more squat).
What to order will depend on what they removed when doing the steel conversion. Hopefully the air lines, compressor, etc. are still there and they just pulled the fuse after removing the bags

Chip H.

 

That's actually how I would have measured (now that I think about how much distance that is, lol), I edited my previous response. Good call.