aemravan's build thread - project TacoRunner

[4RunnerAquasport]

You've replaced the LCA bushings recently haven't you? My 5th gen needs them and on slow bumpy roads it feels like it's in the steering wheel. No noise or vibrations on the hwy, just certain speeds on washboard type stuff.

 

[aemravan]

You've replaced the LCA bushings recently haven't you? My 5th gen needs them and on slow bumpy roads it feels like it's in the steering wheel. No noise or vibrations on the hwy, just certain speeds on washboard type stuff.

Yea the entire lca is new and it was making the same noises prior to the swap. I can physically feel this slop when turning the wheel as it gets exaggerated into the u joint. Removing the u joint and testing it separately shows 0 slop in it but the shaft still slops around so it has to be it.

The only other possible thing it could be is a tilt ball but it feels tight as hell and I don’t think I can add a shim and get it back in like some folks are doing.

If the loctite 660 compound doesn’t fix it I may just let it be.. not sure if the non telescoping section of shaft is an option for a swap or not , looks like 2004 sr5 models had the non telescoping variant so that may be an option.


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[aemravan]

I just spent another hour messing with this damn steering column in an attempt to use the vice to squeeze the outer shaft into an oval and take the slack out. I found that rotating the shaft slightly to a different set of splines helped a little too. I thought I had it nice and snug and re-assembled everythng into the rig to test. Found out right away that I missed with the splined shaft about 130 degrees and had to pull the steering wheel and reclock it lol.


Soon after I discovered that i literally made no difference in the slop. :cheers:

At this point, as frustrating as it was to get it all apart and back together.. I have a feeling I'm just going to leave this damn thing alone and let it be. I don't think that the loctite 660 would really do anything and I will literally have to pull everything apart in order to attempt it before leaving it for 1-3 days to fully cure.. At least I have the peace of mind that there is nothing bolt related that is loose and coming apart, and didn't blow money on a new intermediate shaft to replace the u joint that ended up being 100% good.

 

[aemravan]

damn it! I think i'm going to give this another shot... lol.

While doing some light reading on the loctite retaining compounds I believe I may have ordered the wrong one... the 660 compound is more of a paste and for larger gaps/keyways and I don't think I'll have much luck getting it between the splines of the shaft... but then i came across a forum where (though a different application) a guy had a similar issue with a minor spline wobble that he was looking to fix. It was suggested he use the loctite M680 compound instead of the 660 since it was a lot more fluid (kind of like their thread locker) and would fill smaller gaps up to .015" (which I think should be right in line with what I'm feeling on the splines) and has a better shear strength...

I have a tube ordered for Saturday delivery and will give this another shot.. One thing to keep in mind is that I'll have to set my telescoping feel adjust and leave it.. I'll no longer have this function if I want the compound to do it's job. It sounds promising from a few repairs I've seen retaining keyways that were wobbled way out.. so we'll see I guess.. Taking this all apart one more time shoulnd't be too be of a deal and I won't have to worry about clocking the splines since I'll just leave the U-joint lower portion attached and remove it off the upper shaft. This way as long as I don't turn it more than 90 degrees each way I should be able to line it right back up for a quick repair.

Only issue is letting it cure... I'll have to leave it untouched for at least 24 hours, probably the more the better. I'm just hoping that me messing with re-installing it doesn't impact how/if it cures. With the amount of spline contact it has I think I should be able to get quite a healthy amount of compound on there which is why it's making me think it may just work... I'll report back I guess. :thumb:

 

[miller507]

damn it! I think i'm going to give this another shot... lol.

While doing some light reading on the loctite retaining compounds I believe I may have ordered the wrong one... the 660 compound is more of a paste and for larger gaps/keyways and I don't think I'll have much luck getting it between the splines of the shaft... but then i came across a forum where (though a different application) a guy had a similar issue with a minor spline wobble that he was looking to fix. It was suggested he use the loctite M680 compound instead of the 660 since it was a lot more fluid (kind of like their thread locker) and would fill smaller gaps up to .015" (which I think should be right in line with what I'm feeling on the splines) and has a better shear strength...

I have a tube ordered for Saturday delivery and will give this another shot.. One thing to keep in mind is that I'll have to set my telescoping feel adjust and leave it.. I'll no longer have this function if I want the compound to do it's job. It sounds promising from a few repairs I've seen retaining keyways that were wobbled way out.. so we'll see I guess.. Taking this all apart one more time shoulnd't be too be of a deal and I won't have to worry about clocking the splines since I'll just leave the U-joint lower portion attached and remove it off the upper shaft. This way as long as I don't turn it more than 90 degrees each way I should be able to line it right back up for a quick repair.

Only issue is letting it cure... I'll have to leave it untouched for at least 24 hours, probably the more the better. I'm just hoping that me messing with re-installing it doesn't impact how/if it cures. With the amount of spline contact it has I think I should be able to get quite a healthy amount of compound on there which is why it's making me think it may just work... I'll report back I guess. :thumb:

:cheer2: I'm rooting for you man:boxing:

I've been meaning to tackle that exact same noise for as long as I can remember but the whole idea of having to tear out the steering column doesn't amuse me at all, so far having the volume up has solve that issue for me

I changed the outer shaft that goes to the steering rack and I checked the intermediate shaft as I was putting the extension puck tighten everything and to be honest did not notice any improvements.

You probably seeing these already but in case you haven't. Most related vids I found.

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[aemravan]

:cheer2: I'm rooting for you man:boxing:

I've been meaning to tackle that exact same noise for as long as I can remember but the whole idea of having to tear out the steering column doesn't amuse me at all, so far having the volume up has solve that issue for me

I changed the outer shaft that goes to the steering rack and I checked the intermediate shaft as I was putting the extension puck tighten everything and to be honest did not notice any improvements.

You probably seeing these already but in case you haven't. Most related vids I found.

Thanks! And yes, I've seen just about all the videos, relevant and not, that I could find. What I can tell you is that video #1 is definetely not the issue, nor do I think it really was for them... that tilt ball is spring loaded.. the gap is there for a reason. I have this gap, and it's by design. Maybe it increases some stiffness in the steering, but I just can't see that making any noise...


The second video is a complete waste of money and time to replace. His joint wasn't bad. It feels like it when you move the wheel around as the noise travels right into this joint. I literally have this intermediate shaft in my rockauto shopping cart I was going to buy and replace, and luckily I did more digging. All you have to do is take off that shaft just like he did, clamp it in a vice and check it out.. there was 0 noise. The fact that his rubber puck was moving around is literally the intent behind it. I saw a video where a guy replaced his puck with a solid machined steel disk. I'm sure this would also give more rigid feedback.. but you would probably feel a ton of feedback from the road... and ultimately it is not the cause of the noise/slop.

Many people have the noise/clunk issue due to loose bolts, I don't know how you get to that point.. lol , but again, that is super easy to check.. if you have a loose bolt, then ofcouse that is your issue. if all your bolts are tight, and you are on a 4th gen 4runner, I can say with almost 100% certainty that this splined shaft is the cause of any slop/clunk related issues.


This has been proven on the older columns as well that didn't have a splined shaft but the square tube interface and it did the same exact thing.. wear itself out a bit and wobble back and forth just a touch. In those cases a simple tack weld like shown in the first video would do the trick. In this case.. I am almost certain the outer splined shaft is aluminum and I'm not sure what the splined shaft is made of so no welding.. drilling and pinning would be the only mechanical fixing I would think.

I half-contemplated buying a used Tilt Only rack as I've seen 2 or 3 threads with guys swapping over from a tilt only to a telescoping rack in the 4th gens.. so the reverse should also work obviously. I think the Tilt Only rack should be a lot easier to fix in place to keep from rattling if it is worn out since it would have a splined shaft to slide like mine does.

Anyhow.. What I can tell you is that pulling the rack really isnt THAT bad.. you just have to be mindful of all the spline alignment points before you take it off and apart. I failed to do so and had to reclock my steering wheel.. not a huge issue but still. There are literally 4 nuts that hold the entire rack in with a few plugs that come right off. When I pull it again I'm certain I can do it under 15 minutes with maybe 20-30 tops to re-install.

If this Loctite M680 compound doesn't do the trick I'll probably look into getting my hands on a Tilt Only rack setup and see what it will take to swap.. Kind of curious to know if I can just pull the internal shaft out and swap into my telescoping housing.. that would make it super easy. lol.

 

[aemravan]

Out with the not-so-old-but-slightly-damaged-due-to-me-being-an-idiot rotor/pads and in with the new. Pretty proud of my job on this.. 1 hour in and out for both sides, which also included taking off the wheel spacers, cleaning up the threads on the studs, and chasing the threads on all the spacer nuts before re-installing. It's hot and miserable out so I try to not be out there longer than needed.


You can see some of the damage caused by the wheeling leaning into the wheel while snapping the caliper bolts. It honestly didn't feel bad, no new noises or vibration really, but I decided I was lucky enough already and not to take a chance. I went with 100% OEM toyota rotors and & pads so we'll see how they do.

I'll have to find a decent route to get the bedding out of the way.. but that may have to wait until later this evening. Excited to see how these perform compared to the Brembo pad/rotor setup I had which was cheaper than the OEM but felt to be good quality.

Oh yea.. I am also going up a spacer size for the rear wheels to see if it will resolve my rubbing issue on the TK1 racing sway bar without having to relocate the tabs for it. I looked at flipping it around but that would put the potential point of contact on the tip of the bolt which definitely would put a nice hole in the sidewall. At least right now it is rubbing a large smooth, rounded surface of the heim joint. When I get the rear spacers swapped out, Im going to swap the one that took a trip to the woods just to be on the safe side. Nothing should be wrong with it, and the studs shouldn't have been stressed anymore than they do with the wheel rolling as usual... but just for the last bit of added peace of mind..

 

[miller507]

Thanks! And yes, I've seen just about all the videos, relevant and not, that I could find. What I can tell you is that video #1 is definetely not the issue, nor do I think it really was for them... that tilt ball is spring loaded.. the gap is there for a reason. I have this gap, and it's by design. Maybe it increases some stiffness in the steering, but I just can't see that making any noise...


The second video is a complete waste of money and time to replace. His joint wasn't bad. It feels like it when you move the wheel around as the noise travels right into this joint. I literally have this intermediate shaft in my rockauto shopping cart I was going to buy and replace, and luckily I did more digging. All you have to do is take off that shaft just like he did, clamp it in a vice and check it out.. there was 0 noise. The fact that his rubber puck was moving around is literally the intent behind it. I saw a video where a guy replaced his puck with a solid machined steel disk. I'm sure this would also give more rigid feedback.. but you would probably feel a ton of feedback from the road... and ultimately it is not the cause of the noise/slop.

Many people have the noise/clunk issue due to loose bolts, I don't know how you get to that point.. lol , but again, that is super easy to check.. if you have a loose bolt, then ofcouse that is your issue. if all your bolts are tight, and you are on a 4th gen 4runner, I can say with almost 100% certainty that this splined shaft is the cause of any slop/clunk related issues.


This has been proven on the older columns as well that didn't have a splined shaft but the square tube interface and it did the same exact thing.. wear itself out a bit and wobble back and forth just a touch. In those cases a simple tack weld like shown in the first video would do the trick. In this case.. I am almost certain the outer splined shaft is aluminum and I'm not sure what the splined shaft is made of so no welding.. drilling and pinning would be the only mechanical fixing I would think.

I half-contemplated buying a used Tilt Only rack as I've seen 2 or 3 threads with guys swapping over from a tilt only to a telescoping rack in the 4th gens.. so the reverse should also work obviously. I think the Tilt Only rack should be a lot easier to fix in place to keep from rattling if it is worn out since it would have a splined shaft to slide like mine does.

Anyhow.. What I can tell you is that pulling the rack really isnt THAT bad.. you just have to be mindful of all the spline alignment points before you take it off and apart. I failed to do so and had to reclock my steering wheel.. not a huge issue but still. There are literally 4 nuts that hold the entire rack in with a few plugs that come right off. When I pull it again I'm certain I can do it under 15 minutes with maybe 20-30 tops to re-install.

If this Loctite M680 compound doesn't do the trick I'll probably look into getting my hands on a Tilt Only rack setup and see what it will take to swap.. Kind of curious to know if I can just pull the internal shaft out and swap into my telescoping housing.. that would make it super easy. lol.

I guess its safe to say you are a man on a mission my friend :lmao: keep us posted. :yo:

 

[aemravan]

Looks like the 4th time around pulling the column is a lot quicker lol. As expected I only took 10-15 mins to get the assembly out.

Here is my final attempt with the current assembly.. took some time cleaning up al the grease and marking the splines for quick alignment. Ended up using the 660 compound that is more like a paste on the lower section and the 680 compound higher up. I slid the shaft around a few times to get the fluid down and reassembled as quick as I could to let it sit and cure. Maybe I’m losing my mind .. but it felt kind of promising eve after a few minutes while I was working with it .. who knows.. maybe this will do the trick. I mean it holds messed up keyways in place which is a ton more load than I’ll see here. Only concern here is vibration that could maybe break it down quick.. time will tell. I’ll try and post the video of the slop.

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[aemravan]

And while I was at it I decided to address the rubbing issue on the lower shaft.

Not a crazy rub but definitely interference.. since the shaft sidewall is pretty thick I decided taking off a mm or two wouldn’t hurt anything. The ujoint also had plenty of beef to knockdown a bit.

Tomorrow I’ll try and see if I can get a Dremel in there to sand the reinforcement I welded in as well.. just to be on the safe side.

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[aemravan]

Did a little work today.. got the Amazon axle and one old spare that I had broken down to prep for an emergency trail repair that I’m hoping to never have to use.. lol. Still need to throw together a tool kit but making progress


Installed the lower steering shaft so we’ll see how the clearance works out. Couldn’t really get a dremel in there with the axle in place so hopefully what I did with the shaft itself is enough.

And I started repairing my injured fender.. let’s see how this goes.

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[aemravan]

Well I'll be damned.... I don't know how long it will hold up... but I'll tell you what... the dang on Loctite 660 and 680 did the trick it seems...

I left it alone to cure for almost 2 full days but just took a little time to throw it all back together and so far I don't feel/hear it clunking around anymore... no telling how long it will last, and I don't want to experiment with telescoping the wheel in and out as I'm pretty sure that will shear off the compound and possibly get it clunking again. I don't believe tilting the wheel should have any impact on the spline engagement so that should still be fine.

I'll drive it around for a while and report back I guess.


In other news, my grinding on the lower steering shaft solved the issue of the u joint binding against the frame. I don't see any more scuff marks. I did see the same radial scuff appear higher up but that isn't concerning much to me since it is only rubbing a tiny sharp edge that I failed to knock down. I may build my replacement shaft with a small OD tube if I can find something reasonable on McMaster, if not, i'll just grind it down a bit further and call it a day.


:cheers::thumb3:

 

[aemravan]

Well.. this isn’t taking nearly as long as I thought it would .. making killer progress on the buster up McNeil racing fender.

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[aemravan]

My neighbors and HOA love me

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[aemravan]

It’s almost like nothing ever happened.. lol. The only damage left is just internally to myself for making a mistake I did

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[aemravan]

Andddddd I’m back.

Think I need to get all my wheels balanced.. had a pretty bad vibration at highway speeds and pulled the wheel that went for a ride and found some good gouging on the inside which I’m sure didn’t help vibration.

I slapped on my spare but the weights from balancing last time have long fallen off.

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[aemravan]

Well, I was going to check and see if the addition of the new larger spacers for the rear was contributing to the vibrations I'm feeling... but after pulling them off I realized my TK1 sway bar hits the tire with no spacer on lol. :lookout:

With the wheel I have i need at least a 1 in spacer to clear it for on road, and looks like a 2" spacer (which is what I'm running now) to clear offroad.

I have an appointment scheduled to a reputable small tire shop for a balance and rotation tomorrow at 3 p.m. so I'm hoping they can get the tires balanced good to remove or at least reduce the vibration I'm feeling. It shouldn't be a surprise because I installed my spare in place of the original passenger front wheel, and I know for a fact that I lost quite a bit of balance weights from it while removing and reinstalling it to the tire carrier previously. It was probably at least 5-6 weight strip that came off so I guess I should expect to feel a decent vibration. We'll find out tomorrow.


While messing with the rear spacers I realized that I have yet to do a rear brake job even though I am on my 4th replacement set up front ... :lol:

I ordered a set of heavy duty power-stop K240536 rotors and pads for the rear. Not going to mess with the parking brake replacement, i'll just look and see if I can adjust some slack out of it. Yay more projects! :reddance:

 

[aemravan]

The balancing definitely seemed to do the trick. I still have a slight vibration that comes and goes but with the size of spacers I’m running on all 4 corners along with the chewed up tires from rock crawling I can complain one bit, it’s very minimal.

The rear brakes should be here early this week so I’ll get those swapped out and see how it rides. The fronts still have a slow speed growl but I suspect it is because I did do a good job cleaning off the anti rust coating before getting them bedded in.


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[aemravan]

I just did a thing... it once again confirms that I absolutely have an issue and I fully admit it... I just can't leave my sh!t alone..

With all of the reason work I've done I keep going back to the fact that other than the rear locking diff.. there hasn't been any rear end service on it.. and I'm at 150k miles. That coupled with what I believe has been a bearing noise starting to develop (ever so slightly and it could just be my large tires and spacers..) and the fact that I haven't even done rear brakes on this thing yet just had me drop another $1k in parts....

After blowing out the factory intermediate shaft in the front I realized just how heavy I am and how compromised some of the components are in my drivetrain. The thought of going through all of the work and effort to pull the rear axles and do the bearing swap on them and keep them stock just didn't sit right with me. The fact that I am just about full time 2wd unless I am off-road is loading up the rear axles a lot more than it would have prior... soooo I have a set of Nitro chromoly rear axles on order.. I am hoping they are in stock and not back-ordered for month so we'll see I guess. I also opted for a set of Koyo bearings to match what I was running in the front. Not exactly factory.. but I think they should do OK at least for 70K miles.

For the longest time I was dreading doing the rear bearings but found a nice youtube tutorial and a link to the ebay store with a sweet setup for the press to get everything off so I feel very confident it should be a straightforward process. It will probably take me longer to take apart and put the parking brake mechanism than swap the bearings... or so I hope lol.

With that said, this is going to be the last update/upgrade to the rig for quite some time (other than picking up the LT kit if the timing works out just to keep for the future). The rear brakes will be done today or tomorrow more than likely, but the rear axles and bearings will probably have to wait a month or two (given that I actually get the nitro axles on time) before I make some time to address those.

Either way, feel pretty excited. :banana:

 

[aemravan]

We’ll I’m glad I didn’t order any parking brake pads to go along with the rear rotor and pad swap… the parts are out for delivery so I took a minute during lunch to start tearing down the drivers side . And what do I find ? Looks my my bearings are on their way out and have started leaking bearing grease which is covering the shoes and the inside of the drum. I guess my bearing replacement parts can’t come quick enough and more than likely confirms my suspicion of starting to hear a bit of a bearing howl when on the highway.

Everything you see here is thick grease.

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