Front End Issues?

[nwebb01]

Got my 02 SE about 4 months ago. My first 4Runner! I'm really starting to love this thing. Up until a few weeks ago, most of my driving has been done on fairly well paved suburban streets. I recently wen't on a weekend get away with some friends and went on several rural county roads and noticed when I'm going on ill paved roads, gravel, etc I appear to get a lot wobble in my front end. Doesn't feel like the steering wheel is moving, just feels like everything under it is moving more than it should. After said trip, I looked under the front end and noticed a few things. 1) Front tires are not wearing evenly. The outsides seem to be wearing faster than the rest of the tire, especially on the drivers side. 2) looks like my TRE's are toast as well as my sway bar links/bushings. Is it possible that these two things are causing my uneven tire wear as well as front end play? Note, I did check the tire pressure and they were both at factory recommended from the door jam.

Passenger Side

Drivers Side

 

[HiLife]

Is it possible that these two things are causing my uneven tire wear as well as front end play?

Those could be causing your issues. Since you just got your 4r, I would give the whole front end a check. Especially the lbj if you don't know the actual mileage on those. Having the truck aligned is a good way in making sure the front end is good. The alignment tech will stop the job if anything is worn.

Make sure there's no slop in the steering column as the slip joint tend to loosen up.
Make sure your rack guide bushings are tight.
You also can tighten up the steering rack adjustment via adjustment nut.

There's a lot of info on here thanks to the other members who posts solutions.

 

[runnyrunnerton]

I agree you need an alignment but before you do inspect the following. Inner and outer tie rod ends. Lower and upper Ball Joints. Sway bar bushings, steering rack bushings. Everything you can find with a rubber boot or bushing. Make sure your upper and lower control arm bushings are not shot out as well. Use the FSM to do all this.

If you have never replaced anything under there, replace everything you can see with a cracked boot. cant see the LBJ's in these pics but if they are open and you see grease replace them first. If you are not familiar with front ifs components, for the most part, every ball joint type you run across should be pretty stiff and difficult to move in its socket by hand. My inner tie rod ends were so worn out you could spin them around in the socket.

USE OEM. I swear to you, its cheaper to use oem, or high end polyeurethane bushings.(I have gone down the moog,acdelco and other assorted crap parts and watched them fail in DAYS) . If you get anything else, you will be replacing them again in 10-15k. Dig in and get that stuff swapped in, then align it, not before. You will be blown away how much tighter the front end feels.

Remember every time you screw around with something on the front end attached to the steering or A-arms, technically you need to realign. So while waiting for parts to save your tires, just use a tape measure and make sure you are not totally out of whack.

LBJ's, steering rack bushings, inner and out tie rod ends would be the biggest bang for your buck in my opinion. It worked for me.

 

[JayRolla]

I agree with the others above. Go OEM on the parts. Cheaper in the long run, less time fighting issues and working on rig.

To tighten my rig up I had to replace quite a bit.

Most important to replace right off would be following.

1. Lower ball joints
2. Outer tie rod ends
3. Sway bar links bushings
4. Steering rack bushings

This should tighten it up pretty well. Get alignment and they will inspect the other parts not replaced. They may be bad but the UBJ's and ITRE's dont fail as easily as those other parts.

I would also look into replacing radiator. Research "pink milkshake".