Epic Fail

[PatrickStapler]

So this happened about an hour ago to my ‘99 4WD. Fortunately, I was on a downtown street only going 25-30MPH. No traffic. Lost all brakes and steering...duh!

So what am I looking at here, upper and lower ball joints? Looks like brake line also. Looks like the shocks are also fairly old.

 

[brillo_76]

So this happened about an hour ago to my ‘99 4WD. Fortunately, I was on a downtown street only going 25-30MPH. No traffic. Lost all brakes and steering...duh!

So what am I looking at here, upper and lower ball joints? Looks like brake line also. Looks like the shocks are also fairly old.

Yup UBJ, LBJ, Brake line, CV Joint. Probably new axle seal I can't tell if the sway bar is still connected or not. Would check the make sure rotor not bend and the brake caliper aright.

How old were the ball Joints on the Rig? How many miles on the ride?

 

[eddielasvegas]

Man, that is ugly and glad you are okay.

How many miles on your suspension?

Good luck,

Eddie

 

[PatrickStapler]

TBH, I have no idea the age of the suspension. If I had to guess, I would say everything except the shocks might be OEM. For what I know they could be too. The truck has 315K miles on it.

 

[PatrickStapler]

I have owned it for three years.

 

[PatrickStapler]

What’s weird is the the road I was traveling was as flat as could be. No bumps. No dips. It just snapped.

The flat bed driver said in his many years of service (and he was old) he had never seen one single Toyota fail in this manner. Leave it to me...

 

[White Stripe]

If it was riding ok then I would leave the shocks alone and replace all the ball joints up front.

 

[weekendclimber]

From the looks of the tire wear, it appears your camber was way off. When was the last alignment you had on it?

 

[PatrickStapler]

Alignment is less than a year old. I did notice last week that return to center seemed way less than normal. I assumed caster had somehow been decreased. Maybe that was a red flag to this.

 

[brillo_76]

The ball joints are a weak spot in the 3rd Gen 4runners. Need to be checked constantly and replaced with the slightest of wear. However, there isnt any scheduled maintenance in the service manual for them. I would say replace both top and bottom every 100k miles with OEM ones as lots of folks have had failures with aftermarket ones and have them checked at least yearly for signs of wear. My brother lost a lower ball joint in a accord with over 300k years ago. They were mist likely originals too. Glad you not hurt.

Sent from my SM-J337V using Tapatalk

 

[jross20]

The ball joints are a weak spot in the 3rd Gen 4runners. Need to be checked constantly and replaced with the slightest of wear. However, there isnt any scheduled maintenance in the service manual for them. I would say replace both top and bottom every 100k miles with OEM ones as lots of folks have had failures with aftermarket ones and have them checked at least yearly for signs of wear. My brother lost a lower ball joint in a accord with over 300k years ago. They were mist likely originals too. Glad you not hurt.

Sent from my SM-J337V using Tapatalk

As cheap as they are, I'm replacing them every 25-50 miles.

OP, glad you are okay. You need to swap out all the balls joints, left side too!

 

[Brian.]

100k I can sorta agree with, 25~50 miles (I'm sure you mean thousand) is way, WAY obsessive for anyone running "stock" heights to roughly +2 lifts. They go 300k miles before most failures in stock setup... no sense just throwing money away.

I imagine age has some impact too. This is 20 years, 194k miles:

OP, hate it for ya but glad it was slow speed and you suffered no injury.

 

[04rnr]

I use to warn others about once a month, if they have over 100K to replace those lower balljoints, no one would ever listen, so I gave up.
:der:

 

[RS Dude]

Amazingly, I have never heard of anyone's ball joints failing while going 70MPH! That happening would likely be a death sentence.:gun5:

 

[PatrickStapler]

Is CV joint lube supposed to look like this? Does this look hurt or can I clean it and reassemble? I have a parts washer.

I’m guessing OEM struts and springs...Japanese Kettering and what appears to be factory paint markings. I guess that’s why it was a bit wobbly at 70MPH.

 

[Tacomabob]

Loos like you are extremely lucky you were going as slow as you were, could have been a lot worse.

 

[PatrickStapler]

Thanks for the well wishes guys...I do feel lucky from the aspect of the circumstances in which it happened.

BTW...sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum. I just noticed there are different forums for model year.

 

[alumarine]

You've had water intrusion in the cv joint.
Probably due to a torn boot.

 

[RAD4Runner]

...Fortunately, I was on a downtown street only going 25-30MPH.

Glad you're not hurt, Patrick.

The ball joints are a weak spot in the 3rd Gen 4runners.

Correct! Worst and most dangerous thing Toyota has done with the 4Runner, I think.

Patrick,
There's a thread about it. My explanation why YOUR generation is within that thread here:
https://www.toyota-4runner.org/3175578-post169.html

 

[PatrickStapler]

So it appears these separated from the sockets. The studs are both completely in tact.