OK so my '97 limited is sitting with 290,000kms and I've never done any front end work at all. The steering rack has started to leak and @ 110kph it starts to shimmey pretty good. I've rounded up genuine LBJ, Pro-forged inner tie rods, Pro-forged UBJ, Beck Arnley outer tie rods and a new Steering rack. I'm hoping to be able to do everything in a weekend and am looking for advice on how to proceed. I'm thinking the job should go preety smoothly without having to do things seperatley. Should I drop the rack with the outer tie rods or just try and drop it with the LBJ's still attached?,and then do the uppers and install the new LBJ's then the rack and outers? I figured I'd do some pre-emptive maintenance and do everything at once. I'll book an alignment for the monday following the weekend. What do you guys think?
Total rebuild of the front end?
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meRockboost
New member
Since you are taking out the rack replace your lca bushings with whiteline bushings plus the cam sleeves and put energy suspension bushings on the new rack.
JWaldz
Moderator
Disconnect the LBJ's from the tie rods. The rack is heavy and awkward enough, you wont want the extra weight and that whole assembly together when pulling it.. When you pull the rack, just leave on the ITR's on as it's pointless to remove them if you're replacing them anyways with the new rack. You may be able to get away with keeping the OTR's connected as well, but they might get in the way a little bit.
The steering rack is a pain in the ass to remove. The hard lines are behind it on the driver side and a very tight squeeze to get to. If they've never been touched, I highly suggest spraying the connections with some penetrator (WD-40, PB Blaster...) 2 AND 1 day prior to doing the job as they can be VERY hard to break loose.
Keep the steering wheel locked into place. Use your seat belt and wrap it around a few times and buckle it in. The gear on the steering column shaft is keyed and the steering rack connection will only go in one way. If this gets thrown off, your whole alignment will be thrown off. Center the steering rack the best you can and connect your OTR's as close as to what they are on the old rack. Count threads.
The rest is fairly simple. LBJ's are an easy swap and UBJ's can be a little tedious. I agree with the above statement in getting new bushings for the rack. They can be found at wheelers offroad (here)
The steering rack is a pain in the ass to remove. The hard lines are behind it on the driver side and a very tight squeeze to get to. If they've never been touched, I highly suggest spraying the connections with some penetrator (WD-40, PB Blaster...) 2 AND 1 day prior to doing the job as they can be VERY hard to break loose.
Keep the steering wheel locked into place. Use your seat belt and wrap it around a few times and buckle it in. The gear on the steering column shaft is keyed and the steering rack connection will only go in one way. If this gets thrown off, your whole alignment will be thrown off. Center the steering rack the best you can and connect your OTR's as close as to what they are on the old rack. Count threads.
The rest is fairly simple. LBJ's are an easy swap and UBJ's can be a little tedious. I agree with the above statement in getting new bushings for the rack. They can be found at wheelers offroad (here)
If the steering column shaft is keyed when it connects to the rack, how could the placement be thrown off, esepcially with the steering wheel locked?
In my mind, you'd have to put the gear back from the new rack exactly how it came off on the old or it won't connect, right?
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99% chance you will need to re-centre your steering wheel after changing the rack, even if nothing moves. Don't worry, it's very simple to remove the airbag and pull the steering wheel.
As well, since you are replacing the LBJ's and OTRE, you can simply use a large monkey wrench or pipe wrench to "twist" the ball and socket joint apart between the LBJ and OTRE. It's much easier than fighting to undo the castle nut and pop the joint apart.
Attach wrench and rotate up or down and it will "pop" the ball from the socket. Frankly, I was a little surprised how easily they separated.
As well, since you are replacing the LBJ's and OTRE, you can simply use a large monkey wrench or pipe wrench to "twist" the ball and socket joint apart between the LBJ and OTRE. It's much easier than fighting to undo the castle nut and pop the joint apart.
Attach wrench and rotate up or down and it will "pop" the ball from the socket. Frankly, I was a little surprised how easily they separated.
JWaldz
Moderator
Yes, the new rack needs to be centered as possible or it needs to be matched to the old rack the same as it was when it came off. The best way to do this is when the old rack is off, rotate the gear on it and count full turns until it's maxed out. Match the new rack by maxing it to that one side and reverse steps, the number of full rotations it took the old rack to max out to that one side.
In other words, if it took the old rack 4-1/2 clockwise turns to max out to one side you would start the new rack maxed out on that side and turn it counter-clockwise 4-1/2. If it's not an equal amount of full rotations get it as close as possible b/c like I said, the gear on the steering rack will only go on the shaft one way.
In my experience with 2 junkyard racks, there is no "master spline" where the rag joint attaches to the top of the rack. Nor did it appear the rag joint was set in the same spline from factory. With the both racks centred (confirmed by both measuring and counting rotations), the rag joints were clocked at different angles. The rag joint can only be bolted together one of two ways...offset 180 degrees from each other.
There are a few more details in my build thread. Post #7
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/223376-my-%24760-toyota-4runner-build-2000-sr5-3-4-5-speed-desert-dune.html#post2463680
Also, what ever you do...DO NOT FREELY ROTATE THE STEERING WHEEL SIDE OF THE SHAFT or you risk damaging the clock spring.
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TheDurk
Elite Member
I had my rack off when I did my frame swap as it got moved from one frame to the other. I have no idea if the lower end of the rag joint that goes on the rack is keyed or not as you describe (mine was frozen completely solid and getting it apart would have destroyed the rack) but the upper end of the rag joint that mates to the steering column is just splined and goes on at any position to the precision of one spline--and that's maybe 40 splines or 9° increments, so no more than half that if you get it right.
So when I reinstalled my rack, I centered the wheel and secured it by locking with the key. Because I was raising the frame and rack together, I centered the rack by taping a yardstick to a brake rotor and making it square to the frame. Then I mated the splined column shaft together with the rag joint as I raised the frame into place and the result was almost perfect (alignment shop had front end initial thrust at 1.61° with wheel centered when I took it down there. They had no problem dialing it in.)
If I were doing just the rack, instead of the rack plus frame, I'd do it the same way, and center the rack with rag joint installed using the turn method described, and mate the rag joint to the steering column just as I did when the rack was on the frame.
EDIT: I see the poster above me says the opposite, that the lower end of the rag joint is not keyed but the upper is two 180° positions. This is wrong. That's the MIDDLE of the rag joint, where it only comes together two ways. The top of the rag joint is splined just as [MENTION=144242]CDNsldr[/MENTION] describes for the bottom. Maybe [MENTION=58830]JWaldz[/MENTION] is talking about a different rack and our rag joints are splined at both ends. As I said, I don't know about the bottom, but I'm sure about the top.
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I think this re-iterates the need to lock the steering wheel/column.
JWaldz
Moderator
I say it's keyed b/c I just did a steering rack swap and was having a ***** of a time getting the steering rack gear back over the column shaft. After doing a little investigating I noticed the steering shaft had a spline larger than the others. I guess I consider that keyed if it only goes in 1 or 2 ways.
I edited my post for clarity. I meant that the rag joint itself (which is two pieces, one splined to the rack, the other splined to the upper steering shaft, these two pieces are bolted together), can only be bolted together one of two ways..offset 180 degrees.
As you mentioned, you could get the steering wheel close to centre by changing which spline the upper part of the rag joint is on.
TheDurk
Elite Member
Hmmm. I did not see a spline like that. I suppose it was possible that I was able to take it off centered and put it back centered, and that's why it went back together nicely. That WAS what I was trying to do. Still surprising I succeeded.
mtbtim
Elite Member
Check out this video [MENTION=102606]infamousRNR[/MENTION] (Sean) and I made replacing the steering rack for Sean's friend Dave's 3rd Gen. We go into great detail dealing with getting getting the steering wheel as straight as possible by making the adjustments at the rag joint. We also made adjustments of the tie rods because one side was maxed out while the other side had lots of threads for adjustment.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wZoRP5ogrK0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wZoRP5ogrK0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Acorn22
Member
Aside from the steering rack, I can chime in on the UBJ's. They are a pain but I was able to remove mine with a 3 jawed puller from autozone and a hammer. For the install I used a standard ball joint install/remover tool (big ass C-clamp with some cups) along with an impact wrench and a blow torch. When I torched up the metal around where the UBJ goes it went in pretty easy, just don't char the rubber boot or disfigure the metal.
Hope that helps
Hope that helps
You and me both! The body is in much better shape comparatively. Thankfully, all of the rust on the frame appears to be mostly surface. Im planning on some quality time with a wire wheel and flap disk followed by an arsenal of Eastwood products once summer comes around. I only picked this truck up in Sept last year for a steal of $760; so I, more or less, knew what I was getting in to.
TheDurk
Elite Member
I think your video is quite demonstrative that both the bottom end and the top end of the rag joint goes on to their respective shafts however you choose to install it on the splines, right?
Very nice video, by the way.
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mtbtim
Elite Member
Yeah, each half of the rag joint is on the splines. We never took the upper part of the rag joint off, just loosened the pinch bolt so we could slide it up the shaft and out of the way so we could make adjustments to the lower half on the steering rack.
After getting the rack in and test driving it, Dave said the steering wheel wasn't centered. Before I put the rag joint back together, I told Dave this was our chance to get it lined up really good but he thought bolting it back up as is was going to be pretty close but it ended up not being as close as he thought.
Instead of trying to make all the adjustment at the tie rods, I figured it was much better to get it as close as possible by making the adjustments at the rag joint instead. This way we would be giving the alignment shop more to work with and the end result wouldn't be like we found his rig with one tie rod maxed out (no threads showing) and the other side with tons of threads showing. So, I got back under the rig, disconnected the rag joint bolts one more time and then had Dave turn the steering wheel to where it looked straight. By the way, the tires were already pointing straight ahead. So, now with straight tires, and a centered steering wheel, I picked up the lower half of the joint and would turn it the way it needed to go placing it on the next spine, until it lined back up with the upper half. I ended up shifting it 3 splines. When it was all done, the steering wheel was very close to be straight. After Dave got it aligned, the steering wheel was perfectly straight again and there was still plenty of adjustment available on each outer tie rod.
Thanks for compliment Durk.
