Help! Trying to diagnose swaying problem

It's not the accident. It's the rear sway bar. The end links are too short to use the sway bar once it's lifted. The sway bar winds up acting like torsion bar because of the short links, its constantly loaded. Disconnect the rear swaybar end links, I guarantee you it will stop swaying. If it does, just buy longer end links and you'll be all set.


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Still curious where you're at on this. I know the idea of pulling the sway bar to fix a swaying issue sounds crazy but trust me on it.


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PitbullRescuer said:
It's not the accident. It's the rear sway bar. The end links are too short to use the sway bar once it's lifted. The sway bar winds up acting like torsion bar because of the short links, its constantly loaded. Disconnect the rear swaybar end links, I guarantee you it will stop swaying. If it does, just buy longer end links and you'll be all set.


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Click to expand...

So extended rear sway bar endlinks may help? how about the front sway bar end links, would those help the cause at all?
 
Please excuse dragging up an old link, But was this issue ever resolved? I'm having the same issue, and 2 different shops can't find my problem either. Its gotten to the point now that I can't drive it on the highway, and I'll normally put up with anything. It seems that as I feed the throttle on and off while on the highway, that one side of the rear axle moves slightly fore and aft-that's just my guess, because that's what it feels like. I can see the whole 4Runner yaw to the right and left when gas pedal applied and released. Both shops say that all the bushings and sway bars look good.
 
davejdoyle said:
Please excuse dragging up an old link, But was this issue ever resolved? I'm having the same issue, and 2 different shops can't find my problem either. Its gotten to the point now that I can't drive it on the highway, and I'll normally put up with anything. It seems that as I feed the throttle on and off while on the highway, that one side of the rear axle moves slightly fore and aft-that's just my guess, because that's what it feels like. I can see the whole 4Runner yaw to the right and left when gas pedal applied and released. Both shops say that all the bushings and sway bars look good.
Click to expand...

Are you lifted at all?
 
I have the same issue, replaced my shocks with Bilstein shocks, replaced front sway bar links with heavy duty links and still have same problem. To be more specific as I am driving hwy speeds it sways or rocks from left to right at speeds over 65 mph. Usually I am between 75 mph and 80 mph - if i let off the throttle it stops if i stay on speed it eventually stops.
 
Is the cabin swaying, or the car drifting?

When my sway bar links were shot (bushings), my car at highway speeds would feel like it was drifting all over the road despite the wheel being held straight.

If that's what's happening I'd look at your rear links and check your front links and make sure things are tight, and the bushings aren't shot.

If it's swaying side to side, I would also look and see if your suspension is shot. You should be able to push down on your bumper and the car should dip, then settle very quickly to level, if it bounces up and down you need new shocks, I'd go ahead and replace the springs then too.
 
yes I will add my experience. when the rear control arm bushings wear out the whole truck will sway from the looseness. I replaced the rear upper and lower control arm bushings and the truck drives as straight and true as when new.
 
I’ll have to check my bushings and links in my 4th gen.

It will often feel like I’m driving in a gusty wind storm on a nice calm day


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We just got done with a two week trip out in Colorado and Utah and did some fairly vigorous wheeling (Gold Bar in Moab, Elephant Hill, probably the hardest stuff). Absolutely no problems up to this point, but on the way back to MO at interstate highways, I would occasionally get a back and forth cyclical swaying. Not very violent, not trying to spiral out of control, and usually sort of set of by a road heave or something. At first I thought perhaps it was 'pilot induced', but I'd stick my knee against the wheel to make sure I wasn't moving it, and it would continue. I found that making a larger swerve would sort of shake it out of its thing. And then it would go smoothly for a long while.

There's a sort of looseness around center in the handling, once you've turned a slight bit (like into a corner), the car 'settles in' and feels rock-solid, it's just a bit vague straight ahead.

I just haven't had time to crawl around underneath and look for issues. At a few gas stops along the way back we'd shake the car back and forth vigorously, and never saw anything serious looking (looking at upper, lower A-arms/ball joints, rear suspension arms, sway links).

The plan is to just go over it more carefully with a pry bar looking for loose/soft bushings, and if nothing shows up, take it to a shop and have it aligned.
 
Just as a point of reference, I bought a '99 with 190k miles and only core maintenance addressed (most fluids, brakes, tires). Driving had a very disconnected feeling, swaying. If you've ever been in a helicopter, it feels a little like there (perceived motion is different than expected motion). I haven't driven a lot because it felt so unsteady.

I just replaced the 8 rear control arm bushings with Whiteline poly units and it resolved 80% of the feeling. Well, I also replaced the dead OEM shocks out back, so that may have helped... I haven't touched anything on the front yet. It was astounding the difference felt while driving. I still have the OEM swaybars (and bushings, just bought replacements) as well as end-links and their bushings (researching now given their deteriorated visual condition).

Probably the Most interesting thing was that the OEM bushings were in good visual condition and had imperceptible deflection on the bench (clamped in a vise, using a 2' long cylindrical prybar to 'wiggle'). I'm not sure how you Could test them on the vehicle and know for sure they were good.

Anecdotal every way you cut it though.
 
I appreciate the tips from everyone. I had noticed that whenever my rig was loaded up for a trip, there would kind of be this body sway, especially when there were valleys in the road. Blamed it on my tires being wider. Then this past weekend, it became really noticeable because I had installed a Shrockworks bumper with a spare 32” tire, two Jerry cans and a high lift jack. Add all the weight of the gear and the bumper set up, it felt almost unsafe driving anything above 70MPH. I would mostly be able to remove the sway by moving out of the center of the lane.

Additionally, even before the rear bumper install, as soon as I bought it, give it gas, the rig sways left; give it brakes, the rig would sway right.
 
4x3Lander said:
Additionally, even before the rear bumper install, as soon as I bought it, give it gas, the rig sways left; give it brakes, the rig would sway right.
Click to expand...

That sounds like bad rear links to me..
(just read all of the above posts saying the same thing, lol)
 
JohnMc said:
We just got done with a two week trip out in Colorado and Utah and did some fairly vigorous wheeling (Gold Bar in Moab, Elephant Hill, probably the hardest stuff). Absolutely no problems up to this point, but on the way back to MO at interstate highways, I would occasionally get a back and forth cyclical swaying. Not very violent, not trying to spiral out of control, and usually sort of set of by a road heave or something. At first I thought perhaps it was 'pilot induced', but I'd stick my knee against the wheel to make sure I wasn't moving it, and it would continue. I found that making a larger swerve would sort of shake it out of its thing. And then it would go smoothly for a long while.

There's a sort of looseness around center in the handling, once you've turned a slight bit (like into a corner), the car 'settles in' and feels rock-solid, it's just a bit vague straight ahead.

I just haven't had time to crawl around underneath and look for issues. At a few gas stops along the way back we'd shake the car back and forth vigorously, and never saw anything serious looking (looking at upper, lower A-arms/ball joints, rear suspension arms, sway links).

The plan is to just go over it more carefully with a pry bar looking for loose/soft bushings, and if nothing shows up, take it to a shop and have it aligned.
Click to expand...

Followup on this: After a bunch of wiggling and head-scratching (since I was sure I'd just knocked something loose/crooked out west) I finally checked my tire pressures, and found them all evenly too low. I have onboard air, with an electronic gauge on the filler hose. You're supposed to turn it on before hooking it up to a tire to let it zero out each time, I'm pretty sure I managed to do that wrong the last time we aired up out there, and I went up to '40 psi'... minus the starting aired-down pressure I had been running (about 16 psi). So they were all in the upper 20's, which is way squishy and soft for 33" tires. So mushy squishy tires front and rear with all sorts of sidewall flex... plus a hefty weight (didn't weigh it this year, but it was ~5400 lbs last year loaded up for a 2-week road trip) just resulted in some iffy handling at speed.

Aired them all up to an *actual* 40 psi, and that loose, sloppy mushy on-center feel is gone.
 
I'll throw one more thought at you.

Front wheel bearings...

My 4Runner had 320k when I bought it. Put on ToyTec's on the front and Superflex on the rear with 5100's all around. Plus switched from a 245/70r16 to a 235/85r16.

That's when all the fun started, well, it probably started before but I didn't notice until after. The car wasn't stable going straight, plus if you started a turn it took a lot of input before the car would start to move then it would oversteer. So, I'd have to counter steer just slightly. This was on every turn, but much more pronounced at 60-70mph.

I started replacing the UCA, new LBJ, all front bushings. Still had the problem.
Replaced all rear bushings. Still had the problem.
Re-torqued the steering rack guide and installed all new guide bushings. Put the 245/70's back on. Spot welded the steering column and shimmed the rag joint. Put the 235/85's back on. Replaced the steering gear w/ a solid guide steering gear and replaced the intermediate steering linkages.
Nothing helped and I was thinking that I was just going to have to live with it. I jacked up one tire at a time to check wheel play and everything felt tight. I'd rotate the tires by hand and they seemed fine.

On the way back tp North Idaho from Tahoe, I started hearing a wheel bearing noise. After replacing both front wheel bearings, my steering issue is gone! Nice solid steering. No more understeer-oversteer-countersteer issues.

I read all the articles on here about steering issues and replaced everything that I could think of. I'm sure the other parts needed to be replaced, but it was the wheel bearings that finally fixed my problem.
 
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