Earlier this year I had to perform an emergency stop to avoid an accident in my 2002 4WD Toyota Tundra. The non ABS brakes locked up and I slid diagonally across the bumpy roadway flat spotting all 4 tires but I did not hit anything.
This violent action ripped the original rubber seal on the center carrier bearing causing the drive shaft to wobble & vibrate (I have posted about this before)... I was two hours away from home, and the return trip at highway speeds caused a lot of shaking. Note that all of the rubber parts & bushings on the underside of this truck have suffered from a decade worth of extreme heat reflecting up off the exposed concrete pad I park on, dry rot is a problem.
The repairs include a 2nd new drive shaft, 4 new shocks, a new passenger side steering rack bushing, 4 new tires that are load force balanced, new end links and bushings on the front anti-roll bar, the Hellwig rear anti-roll bar has been re-centered because it had shifted to one side were it was in contact with a shock perch... all of this and I am still getting a wobble!
It feels like the entire truck is gently bouncing and shaking at certain speeds with and without a load in the bed, mainly between 45 and 55 mph in any gear. Other than that, the truck drives, steers, and brakes perfectly fine.
What am I missing here?
Could the rear axle be out of alignment?
Thank you for your time.
The screws securing the door mirror needed tightening...
Did you change the center bearing? Inspect u-joints?
A wobbling driveshaft can wreak havoc on a driveline, everything from pinion bearings to slipyokes and transmission mounts
The entire drive shaft assembly has been replaced twice by my local Toyota dealership, once under warranty because we thought the 1st one was out of balance.
by the way, none of the things I mentioned are part of the driveshaft assembly.
Have you taken it to an alignment shop at all? The rear axle on a truck is a solid axle and doesn't really have a means of adjusting alignment. Unless the leaf spring bushings have play at the mounts, or the U-bolts holding them to the axle have been messed with, the rear axle should stay pretty much aligned. It's your front wheels that can come out of alignment. Slamming that hard on the brakes could very easily have thrown your alignment off.
I would check for play at your ball joints and tie rods as well. Replace anything with torn boots. A good alignment shop will check these things and tell you what is wrong, if you specify your problem.
The alignment, tie rods, and ball joints all check out fine.
Have phasing and pinion angles been checked?
Seems to me this it Toyota's fault and they are the ones who should be doing this diagnosing not you.
Toyota is doing the diagnosis, and they discovered all of the issues I listed in my initial post... I thought it would be worth checking here to see if anyone could shed some light on this complicated issue.
How does one check phasing & pinion angles, and could this incident altered phasing and angles?
Well Toyota did a bunch of work, but they didn't actually fix the problem right. Now you're starting to do their job for them.
Anyway, if the event was bad enough to do things like demolish the center bearing and shift the stabilizer bar, then I'd say it's within the realm of possibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idk3BVDVHq4
Well you guys offered up a bunch of things that Toyota has already addressed, so it's not outside the realm of possibilities that you guys would have missed it on the 1st or even 2nd look.
Thank you for the videos, I will discuss this aspect with my techs.
If you listed ALL the things you already tried, then we might not have wasted our time discussing them again.
Anyway, it might require a more high tech approach then. Record the sound or vibrations and use frequency analysis to narrow down the possibilities. Whack a high resolution camera on the chassis and take the truck down the highway. That works for a lot of people.
You may also want to take a peek at this post:
https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/qa/low-speed-front-end-shake/
and searching the forum for other answers.
Who did the work? Obviously, something is still wrong and has to be properly diagnosed and repaired. I would take it to another alignment specialty shop for examination. It could turn into a dangerous situation for you and others.
My local Toyota dealership did the work, and they are pretty well stumped at this point.
Obviously, your local Toyota personnel are not qualified to do the work. Suggest finding a good, independent alignment specialty shop (not a chain store).
The Toyota techs are qualified to do the work, and we don't have an independent alignment specialty shop anywhere near my location.
The alignment checks out fine, and the truck track straight without any unusual wear on the tires so I see no need for an independent shop.
they were surprised to discover the Michelin tires were in fact out of round
That’s insane! I wonder if the dealership stored the tyres correctly in their stockyard. What’s the manufacturing date on all the tyres?
The tires were manufactured a month before they were installed... the only possible explanation is how the world responded to the Covid flu B.S.
My bet would be loose and worn tie rod ends.
They passed inspection
You lost that bet, and you want to double down? That sounds insane to me.
Don't go too far down that road...
Doc
@h2o-man, Doc has already been likewise notified in a moderators' thread not visible to the public. There just needs to be a little cooling down before things go over the edge.
The reality is that there is only so much we can do from a distance, not being able to examine your vehicle. All we can do is make suggestions about what might be causing a particular problem. It is also possible for even good technicians to overlook things and make mistakes. So even taking it as read that the Toyota technicians have honestly done their best job, on a tough problem like this where there has been serious damage to a decades-old vehicle, obtaining a second opinion from a good chassis shop would not be a bad idea.
Apparently, the Toyota dealership is NOT qualified because they cannot fix your problem on their car. Good luck!
Toyota has fixed multiple problems that resulted from the near accident, I don't blame them.
Are there any more qualified members here that want to take a stab at it?
Take it somewhere else to be properly fixed.
"You can lead a horse to water but ......"
... but find all of the water has evaporated "
If you keep using a dealership for anything, you're going to get ripped off. You said you'd use the dealership for mechanical repairs, service and maintenance. Good luck with that.
Exactly. And this incident is a perfect illustration of your point, and the dealership's incompetence.
Wrong! My dealership stepped up and replaced the defective tires with a brand new set of Michelins at no charge... they even upgraded me to the next larger size. My dealership is awesome!
The alignment and tie rods checked out just fine, neither are not the problem.
What am I missing here?
The ball joints also passed inspection.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Sound familiar?
Is there a remote chance that a failed body mount cushion would cause this issue?
I used the door mirror and paid close attention to the relationship of the bed, cap & cab as I drove along, and I could see the bed & cap moving around together at he same time I felt the vehicle wobble and bounce. I parked the truck and pushed on the side of the cap & bed (they are bolted together)... I could hear the creaking sound as I got it rocking from side to side. It has to be a bed mount that is working loose... the high wedge ARE cap is acting like a sail in the wind and rocking the truck as I drive along
Earlier this year I returned to the dealer a day or two after the new set of Michelin tires were installed, and I told them that I thought the tires were defective. They said Michelins don't have problems like that, and focused their and my attention elsewhere.
UPDATE: New tires, shocks, two drive shaft assemblies, front end links & bushings, a steering rack bushing and I still have a vibration & wobble, so I took the truck to my local tire store where they were surprised to discover the Michelin tires were in fact out of round. Their balancing machine is calling for 4 to 8 ounces of weight per tire... that's nuts! They took me back to the shop so I could see this with my own eyes.
The Toyota dealer will replace all four tires with new Michelins sometime this week under warranty. Out of round Michelin tires are extremely rare, but it does happen.
Thank you for following along, and a special thank you to those of you that offered constructive suggestions.
Dealerships 🤦♂️
They'll hire any warm body these days.
That's true of just about every business these days... I'll keep using my dealership for mechanical repairs, service & maintenance and leave tires to my local tire store.
Thanks for coming back and letting us know what the solution was to this perplexing problem. It goes to show that one cannot assume that new parts are in fact good even when they come from a company known for quality. (At least you have an honest tire shop. Some of them would just add 1/2 pound of balancing weights to a tire and call it a day.)
Update: I had to jump through a few additional hoops, but the vibration & wobble issue was solved this morning when my Toyota dealership installed a brand new set of Michelin Defender tires at no charge. These new tires have restored my 1st gen Tundra's Cadillac ride, and I am a happy Tundra driver once again.