[aemravan]

Out with the old in with the new. Less maintenance and better ride comfort is a worthy sacrifice of a little articulation..

The upper link is done and everything fits like a glove.

I also did the panhard bar and found out that the factory bolt is noticeably undersized for the 9/16” insert and could very well be the cause of some added noise I’ve been tracking down .. I should have enough hardware coming to throw in actual 9/16” bolts into the panhard bar tomorrow as well.




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[aemravan]

spent some time this weekend and got the remainder of the links swapped out along with installing the 9/16" hardware in the panhard bar and lower links in place of the factory 14mm hardware. Definitely noticeable slop between 14mm hardware and 9/16" bushings and heim joints... equivalent size? Yes.. ideal? No.

I must say.. having bushings in place of heims definitely improved the ride, in particular at low speeds over some uneven road surfaces around town.

Funny thing though... I still hear a bit of the noise I was hearing before
It's definitely coming from the passenger rear.. though now I'm not sure if it could even be something roof-rack related with my giant tent on there.. if not, it has to be either a noisy shock or possibly something with the parking brake assembly. It's not a super concerning sound... but it's been driving me crazy and I don't know how much more time I want to spend chasing it down.


The wheel balance issue is still a thing and seems to come and go. Driving me nuts. I am almost certain that I could just have a good tire shop vector out (spin the tire on the rim a bit to offset the high points) the set before doing the actual balancing it should be ok.. my whole attempt at running counteract balance beads ended up being a $200 failed attempt. Maybe the work for some.. but DEFINITELY did not work for me. Mind you this is also with the centramatic wheel balancers running so there should be enough weight sloshing around to take out just about any imbalance my setup should have with so little miles on them.

Not surprising.. but I haven't had a single hit on my for-sale threads anywhere... I'm down to asking for $1400 for all 5 wheels and tires! That's half of what I paid , which sounds very painful but I'm pretty dead set on going to a 10.5" wide tire and I don't think it would look right on a 9" wide wheel..

[4RunnerAquasport]

Originally Posted by aemravan

Noisy Shock.

I've had my shock misalignment spacers on both trucks make some racket before. The Heims on the links do as well, but the lower shock mounts were making most of the noise on washboard and small pavement ruts.

[aemravan]

Originally Posted by 4RunnerAquasport

I've had my shock misalignment spacers on both trucks make some racket before. The Heims on the links do as well, but the lower shock mounts were making most of the noise on washboard and small pavement ruts.

My Dobinsons IMS rear long travel shocks do not have a misalignment spacer. The fronts do for the Icon's, but it's relatively quite there now that my LCA is tight.

After reading your message and going out to check the shock mount I started messing around with the rear just little but trying to roll the wheel front to back with my weight. What I found was that with the parking brake engaged I was getting some strange noises from the same back right corner.. with the parking brake off it didn't seem to do it. I think it is quite possible that in my attempt to NOT overheat and warp the new rear drums I didn't tighten the parking brake adjuster all the way. I know it doesnt hold as good going backwards, but I could get it to slip with my body weight rolling the wheel back. Pulled everything apart and put a few clicks of adjustment in and I can't seem to reproduce the noise by hand with the brake engaged. I think it is still a bit loose.. it doesn't take much throttle at all to get the rig to move on the flat ground. A quick test drive made me feel like possibly the noise is kind of better.. maybe gone? But I doubt I'm that lucky lol.

I knocked around everywhere, including the roof rack, and there is definitely some noise coming from the hardshell RTT as well.. I think I'm just paranoid ever since my wheel came off... maybe there isn't anything crazy out of the ordinary going on and it's just the nature of the current setup I have.

[aemravan]

Man … this is a god damn rollercoaster. I’m seriously close to calling it quits and either selling the damn rig or taking half way back a couple of build steps.

Between the never ending tire shake, which I’m working on getting a set of new Kenda Klever tires.. and now some damn popping noise coming out of the right rear under heavy acceleration I’m just losing motivation on working on the thing. I want to feel confident in the build to not have to stress on longer drives.. and I’m just far from it.

I spent an hour in a dark parking lot backing up, driving in circles , crawling under the rig with a light and I just can’t figure it out.. i can reproduce it just about every time when I really lay into the throttle and the body rolls over toward the back right there an audible pop of some mechanical sound that I can also feel. I have no damn clue what it could be , nothing obvious is making contact that I can see.


The only thing that maybe comes to mind … is it possible that the TK1 sway bar is jumping splines under shock load ? I’ve seen instances of similar bars stripping.. I need to disconnect the links again and tie them off and see if I can reproduce the pop I guess.. if it does still happen I’m lost .. I would expect the same pop under a swerving condition and I don’t think I’m hearing it.. I don’t know.


The screwed up Ackerman with the lc200 rack doesn’t help .. really regret going with the swap to be completely honest… I’m half way there with the decision to pull the damn rack and drop in a factory rack. Definitely should have done some thinking instead to jumping in head first.

I guess step one is to disconnect the bar and see if I get any closer to tracking down the noise .. if it’s gone, cool, if not, I don’t know what’s next. Then I’ll see what I need to do about the rest of it. Sell it or pull everything and just do a full out solid axle swap and be done lol.



Anybody interested in an almost new LC200 rack with some double-shear/gusseted spindles ?? Lol


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[rdruss]

Mine is nowhere near with the mods you have done, but I get a weird noise often when I turn, done a few basic checks but still does it ... oh well!
The more you mod, the more chance for strange occurrences, but probably just aggravating and nothing else.

[4RunnerAquasport]

Sorry to hear this. The noises we hear on these rigs is always an annoyance.

As far as the LC rack, you could swap to one of Travis's Tundra racks. You've already done most of the mods to accommodate it.

[Inv4drZm]

My dad drove my truck the other day, he texted; 'is it suppose to have a check engine light?'

'Yes its from the o2 sensor spacers not setup correctly.'

He texted again a little later; 'there is squeaking coming from underneath, do you know about that?'

'Yeah thats from the rear control arms, all heims.'

Lol
Its when the squeaks stop or CEL goes out is when I get worried...

[awhitney1]

Those darn squeaks lol. Do you spray some sort of PTFE on the heims?

Originally Posted by Inv4drZm

My dad drove my truck the other day, he texted; 'is it suppose to have a check engine light?'

'Yes its from the o2 sensor spacers not setup correctly.'

He texted again a little later; 'there is squeaking coming from underneath, do you know about that?'

'Yeah thats from the rear control arms, all heims.'

Lol
Its when the squeaks stop or CEL goes out is when I get worried...

[awhitney1]

I currently have the Tundra rack from Travis, have not installed it yet, but will in the spring time along with heimed solid piece tie rods from RC Fabrication. Hope it goes well!

Originally Posted by 4RunnerAquasport

Sorry to hear this. The noises we hear on these rigs is always an annoyance.

As far as the LC rack, you could swap to one of Travis's Tundra racks. You've already done most of the mods to accommodate it.

[Inv4drZm]

Originally Posted by awhitney1

Those darn squeaks lol. Do you spray some sort of PTFE on the heims?

I might have done it originally but I just don't care that much about it at this point. It doesn't bother me.

Most noticeable when the windows are down and driving slow over bumps. Otherwise the exhaust and radio can drown it out.

[4RunnerAquasport]

Originally Posted by Inv4drZm

My dad drove my truck the other day, he texted; 'is it suppose to have a check engine light?'

'Yes its from the o2 sensor spacers not setup correctly.'

I've had decent luck w the mini cats that space the sensor out from the exhaust and have some sort of catalyst built in.
You used to be able to buy them all over the net, but I think the powers that be didn't like it.

[awhitney1]

Burtman Industries still sell the cel eliminators

Burtman Industries

Originally Posted by 4RunnerAquasport

I've had decent luck w the mini cats that space the sensor out from the exhaust and have some sort of catalyst built in.
You used to be able to buy them all over the net, but I think the powers that be didn't like it.

[aemravan]

Thanks guys. I think being tired and frustrated last night didn't help. Back at it with a fresh mind today during lunch to do some investigating and prepping for more testing.



Step one was to pull everything I had stored inside, including all my recovery gear bags, tools, some camping equipment, etc. Make sure I don't have anything sliding around that I wasn't thinking about. First impression... holy hell I"m carrying a lot of extra weight.... I am heavily considering pulling my drawer system and selling it. It's pretty sweet to have.. but I have been finding myself completely limited on space for every day things... For the few camping trips I take a year I think I could have everything packed out even more compact across a couple of different bins, and just use my tire table for a cooking surface.. it's probably more sturdy anyway.



There's no reason I need 150-200 lbs of axle stub shafts, tools, and recovery equipment for 95% of the time I spend driving the rig. A basic set of tools to change a tire should suffice.. anything more major I can run back to the house for what ever tools are needed.. At this point I really wish I had a car port or a garage large enough to rig up a pulley system to quickly pull the RTT off the rig... again, a bit silly to drive around the city with maybe 5-8 camping trips a year... lol. If I had to guess, I can probably slim up close to 700 lbs between everything I have on there now.







Anyhow, back to the potential noise... I just got done pulling the TK1 Racing links from both sides and strapped the bar to the frame to get it out of the way. I haven't yet tested this out.. but did want to mention somewhat of a promising find... A while ago since I shifted my axle back, i had some contact from the drive shaft to the gas tank skid. After the first time it hit, I bent it back, and heard it hitting hard again. I left it alone for a few circles around the neighborhood and the noise stopped. After inspecting it, it looked like the weights on the driveshaft "self clearanced" the skid by pulling back a few spots. I decided that was the end of it.



While inspecting the links.. I just happened to look at the skid.. and to my surprise, found what seems to be some-what fresh impact marks, but not only on the skid plate, but also on the rear strap. I'm throwing in a couple of pictures so you can get the idea. It wasn't just a single spot making contact, but rather a few of them near the back of the shaft.



I went at it with a pry bar and really pushed the skid back into place and as far away as possible. I also adjusted my panhard bar to the shortest possible configuration I could get with the passenger side link. This should obviously pull the axle a bit further to the passenger side, and the driveshaft further away from the skid plate....



Thinking back to last night... while making a left-hand U-turn, I hammered the gas to get out of the way quicker, and this resulted in 1-3 solid "thuds" which I originally attributed to the same "clunking" noise I was getting under hard, straight acceleration.. I am now thinking that it is quite possible that what I was hearing was the impact from the driveshaft to the skid.... it makes sense in a hard left-hand turn with the body rolling over right and rearward really hard.. this would have put the driveshaft to the closest position to the skidplate... or am I crazy here?



Anyhow... I'm waiting for my gopro to finish charging so I can strap it under the rig and go do some test runs really quick with hopes that between moving the axle over and disconnecting the sway bar I won't be hearing any of the noises coming from the rear end.. If I do hear the noise.... maybe I can at least have some video assistance to help track it down from this point... if that doesn't work keep you eyes peeled in the For Sale section

[aemravan]

well.. spoke too soon lol. The issue isn't gone, and I can clearly tell the noise I'm hearing isn't the gas tank skid.. So I guess I can conclusively say that the TK1 bar is not slipping the splines, which I guess is good, and that there isn't any additional clearancing needing on the driveshaft to the skid.

What I can say is that now that I have the bar off and the axle moved over.. the noise I am hearing is worse than it was yesterday, or at least is easier to reproduce. All I have to do is going 60-75% throttle from a dead stop and I can get it to "clunk clunk clunk" and it is visibly not hitting the skid. The feeling is that it seems to be coming from the right rear wheel, however, that could just be the way the sound makes it over through the cab...

I'm trying to see if I can drop a link to a quick gopro video from youtube so that you can get the idea of what i'm hearing..

A bit stumped at this point and don't know if it's something serious, like rear-end/axle related.. if could it be as stupid as something with the driveshaft not liking something.. I can't recall if I did the joints on the rear shaft or not... the front was definitely replaced... could it be overloading and binding under heavy load? I just can't imagine anything going on with the rear end since literally anything under less load is smooth and noiseless... but who knows..

My GoPro Video - YouTube


Edit* just went back through my thread.... and I am just about certain that I only changed out he u-joints on the front driveshaft because that was the one that was a bit tight when I was working on getting the FJ t-case into the rig.... could it be as stupid as the driveshaft failing? Maybe some of the vibration I am feeling out of the rear end that I have been attributing to tire balancing is also caused by it? can't imagine be being that lucky... I guess it's time to pull the rear shaft out and see what the u-joints feel like...