terrible driveline vibration after lift

I got the truck back from alignment, alignment was pretty far out so it made sense to get it done but had no effect on the vibration as I suspected. The shop is telling me it's the pinon angle that is causing the trouble. Which I would have agreed with but I am not seeing many response on the forum to indicate others have had issues with the pinion angle causing vibration.

Next step will be to remove the drive shaft and confirm that is the problem area. I will look into greasing it as well. I haven't done that myself yet but I'd imagine its straight forward.
 
I tried everything under he sun including different driveshaft. I even had a junkyard one rebuilt by the same shop that had been telling me me oem one was fine..I never fixed the vibration until I searvhed where [MENTION=67615]Dirtco[/MENTION] and [MENTION=68940]Steeze[/MENTION]mqueen got their driveshafts. I contacted Ricky mountain driveline on the front range and they hooked me up..they received my driveshaft from ups at 10:30 rebuilt it and shipped it back that day. I had it the next morning and have been problem free since.
 
I tried everything under he sun including different driveshaft. I even had a junkyard one rebuilt by the same shop that had been telling me me oem one was fine..I never fixed the vibration until I searvhed where [MENTION=67615]Dirtco[/MENTION] and [MENTION=68940]Steeze[/MENTION]mqueen got their driveshafts. I contacted Ricky mountain driveline on the front range and they hooked me up..they received my driveshaft from ups at 10:30 rebuilt it and shipped it back that day. I had it the next morning and have been problem free since.
 
Alright guys. I have been doing quite a bit of research on it to figure out what is going on... I think i figured it out, but have not been able to do it on mine yet to check and see if it is gone.
But....
When you lift the truck the pinion angle changes and can cause the vibration. From what i have seen some have gotten rear adjustable upper control arms to adjust the pinion angle to be more straight.
Here are some links on replacing i have found

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/163066-rear-control-arm-replacements.html

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/1217030-post736.html

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/85197-ripcords-2002-4runner-sport-ed-66.html#post1390264

Once i have the time and resources i am going to try this and see if it fixes the issue... not sure when that will be but it is now the next mod on the list for me


Reading through the thread below, they said it was pinion angle at a shop he went to... So that just supports the theory
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/4th-gen-t4rs/152290-lift-vibrations.html
 
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Yet countless numbers of us add lifts without any vibration whatsoever. With the length that these have for rear driveshafts (they are long relative to other vehicles like Wranglers, CJs, etc) you'd need to lift it a foot for any appreciable change in pinion angle. IMO, if changing the pinion angle resolves a vibration issue in a 3rd gen, there were other contributing factors as well.
 
The vibration on my truck has been so bad that I stopped driving it and have been just driving my car for the last while. I also ended up having a large frame problem when my rear lower control arm bracket decided to disconnect from the frame due to rust. I welded that back up and made the vibration significantly worst.

I am of the opinion this is 100% due to the pinion angle but I am not sure why some people do not suffer from it like I have been. A couple weeks ago I pulled the rear drive shaft and drove around in fwd for a week it was so bad.

Here is a picture of my diff angle, by scaling it I am approximately 6° off. The max from the documentation posted above says no more than 3° or you get conflicting sin waves which result in the vibration.




So I finally got around to building some adjustable upper control arms. I picked up the builder parts off of TRM customs. It was quite a bit less than getting the pre built ones from toytec. I should be putting these on this weekend so I will update the thread with hopefully a post about no vibrations.


 
Incompatible driveline angles can cause vibrations.

But in that pic your 3rd member appears to be soaked in gear oil. If it is, and the Pinion seal is leaking that bad, eventually there won't be enough gear oil in the housing, and parts will wear rapidly. That can also cause increasingly bad vibration until the parts fail completely.
 
That's not gear oil its a fresh coat of por 15.

I got the upper arms installed yesterday and it helped out quite a bit. I do not have a picture but I ended up extending the arms 0.75" over stock which by eye lined the diff up with the shaft. There is still a vibration though which likely means I need to rebuild or get a new drive shaft but I can live it with unlike before.
 
Did you skip telling us the part where you installed that other driveline and it didn't fix it?

Or did you just not do that and fab up some control arms...?
 
Are you positive the vibrations are coming from the rear? Or that you dont have a bad tire/wheel balance?

You may or may not be correct on the source of the vibrations. I can tell you this though, LC coils are REALLY tall, especially for a stock weight 3rd gen. I ran them for just under a year, and here are my experiences

- Regardless of what I had read, my 7 wraps (more technically if you look at the coils they are 7.5 and 7.75 wraps) gave me a full 4" of lift over brand new stock 98 coils, which are the 2nd tallest oem coils after 99s. When I ran those coils I had bad vibrations after 50. Most of those vibrations disappeared after I dropped down to 890s. Unless you are planning on doing some legit off roading, or adding weight to the back, the LC coils really are overkill. And I would expect to continue dealing with vibration issues running them at stock weight.
 
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