Sloppy Steering and Vibration at 60+

[2003V8LTD]

Having owned three 4-gen runners and seen this issue to some degree on each one, I would say that having the vehicle aligned and your wheels meticulously balanced goes a long way toward solving it. An alignment is very simple, because with a fixed rear axle there's nothing to do except up front. And I don't know why it's so, but a 4Runner is incredibly sensitive to proper wheel balance ... maybe they are set up with a little less caster than most roadgoing vehicles; that's all that occurs to me.

The big chain shops do a pretty mediocre job of alignment and balance; best to take it to a local specialist, or even bite the bullet and go to a dealer, and get it bang-on once and for all.

I've been having an issue with my 4runner where she starts to get very skittish starting at around 60. Either she reeally doesn't like I-80 or something's up.

Basically once you get up to 60 the steering wheel starts to vibrate, then around 65 ish a front end vibration shows up. This front end vibration varies in intensity and seems to come and go, you can feel it in the steering wheel and floor and the front of the car starts to wander around while pulling right.
It gets worse until about 70 where it peaks and the front end feels loose and it starts jerking around unpredictably (especially while turning left it seems), before calming down past 75+ and remaining as a wobble and slight right pull.

I have jacked the vehicle up to see if there was anything was loose in the steering system/suspension only a very slight side to side motion in the FR wheel. However it was incredibly minor, and I'm not sure if it would cause a vibration so severe.

On occasion I can hear a faint metal pinging when it gets really bad. But that hasn't happened in a long while.

Any help is much appreciated.

 

[riceandpho]

since tire pressure helped a little bit, I'm suspecting an unbalance wheel and bad alignment, just because you did the alignment 4000 miles ago, something could happen, also road condition too.

tire pressure should of help with the skidding since they maxed out with that 50-60 psi. that's why I said to drop it to 34.

now the steering, have to check the alignment again, pretty sure the toe needs to be adjusted, hopefully your camber and caster is good too.

even when they finished the toe adjustment, they might need to tweak a side to compensate the pulling of a side.

if you don't plan on going to the shop anytime soon, rotate your wheels in an X pattern. see if that changes anything. that might tell you a wheel is off balance.

 

[Piggity]

If the wheels are lug-centric then you need to take it to a shop that can actually do a proper lug-centric balance on the wheels...it's an actual fixture with 6 fingers at 6x139.7 that can properly place it in the holes of the wheel....probably a bad explanation but that's all I got. Look it up.

It's best to start with a quick call or message to American Racing to determine whether or not the wheels are actually lug centric.