Hey everyone, I own a 4th gen and my friend has a 3rd gen that has a terrible swaying problem that we're trying to diagnose and fix. We've read up everything we can on here, but can't seem to solve the problem, was hoping the 3rd gen experts can chime in.
So he got the car bone stock at around 110K miles from original owner, the previous owner wasn't very savvy with cars and his idea of taking care of the car was occasional oil changes and frequent car washes, not much else in terms of car maintenance.
It originally had a slight alignment issue, but my friend decided to upgrade the suspension and then do the alignment post-lift.
He has the following setup:
- Camburg UCAs in the front
- ToyTec coilovers in the front
- Bilstein 5100 shocks in the rear
- Toytec superflex coils in the rear
- ToyTec Adjustable panhard bar in the rear
- SpiderTrax Wheel Spacers all around
- 4crawler 1.5 body lift
- 285/75R16 GT Radial Mud Terrain tires
He then got an alignment post-lift to close perfect on everything else, but the caster was still off (more on this to come).
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At this point,
the car had two problems:
- The car sways aggressively left/right at freeway speeds, where its a struggle to even hold the steering wheel straight
- The car pulls hard to the left when braking
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He researched all over these forums and asked opinions from several shops, including an authorized Toyota shop here in the Bay Area.
Through all the research/opinions,
he did the following to try and fix the swaying:
- Replaced Inner Tie Rods
- Replaced Outer Tie Rods
- Replaced Lower Ball Joints
- Replaced lower control arm bushings
- Replaced Rack/Pinion Bushings
After all this, the car was
STILL swaying, so he did the following:
- Swapped with my 275/70R17 wheels/tires to test drive and see if it was something wrong his tires/wheels
- Rotated tires twice
- Rebalanced the tires three times from different shops
- Redid the alignment three times from different shops
The third and final alignment was from Toyota, where they were able to
fix his caster and finally got his car to factory alignment specs.
And the car is STILL swaying.
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As for the braking problem, he first
bled the breaks, but it kept pulling, so he thought it was seized calipers so he did the Tundra brake swap and
replaced calipers, rotors, and pads. (I'm jealous 4th gens dont have this swap, but I digress...)
It was STILL pulling to the left after the tundra brake swap and thought it was another set of faulty brakes. Since he got the rotors/calipers from AutoZone, they have a lifetime warranty on them, so he
returned them for a new set of rotors/calipers and installed them, as well as rebled the breaks only for the car to keep pulling.
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At this point, we are all out of ideas for BOTH problems, please, any and all opinions are welcome,
this problem has persisted for almost 9 months and more than $3K worth of repairs now without any solution. Please 3rd gen experts, we need your help!