gerth92

I recently lifted my truck with BJ spacers and OME torsion bars and now I am fighting to keep the truck on the road. A friend at work told me I have to drop the tie rods back down to the correct angle with an after market pitman arm. I can't seem to find anything like this for Toyota IFS. And I can't seem to find many threads on bump steer for my particular model. Any info is appreciated. And also it has been professionally aligned.

muddpigg

iTrader: (1)

How much lift with bj spacer?

never seen a drop pitman arm for IFS, have you checked idler arm? They bend like crazy on lifted IFS rigs. How's TREs?

Give more details on rig set up. When the happens; low speed, high speed, surface type...

gerth92

I've got a 1.5" spacer plus about 1.5" or torsion bar crank. The idler arm is brand new. The alignment shop had to change it before aligning. I assume the tie rod end's are good because the shop didn't say they were shot. It goes all over the place at low speeds and high speeds. Newly resurfaces asphalt is the only place it will go straight.

gerth92

Here are my tierods coming down. They are pretty steep, but is that enough to make it unstable?

muddpigg

iTrader: (1)

Looks to me like way too much lift for IFS. You're going to eat CV shafts left and right. You don't want more than 20 - 22* on running angle of CV shafts. I bet you do have steering problems, geometry looks terrible. Relax torsion bars and just run ball joint spacers. Or figure a way to drop both pitman and idler arms. Maybe the guys that run bracket lifts have another solution for steering geometry.

ewong

I am going to guess that some of the issue is that there is very little droop left in that suspension with the bars cranked all the way up
So the "bump steer" is actually "tires not in contact with the road" as there is no "droop" left.

Cut the bolts (or if you are lucky - crank em down) back to stock, re align and then see where things stand.

ewong

also - I dont see a sway bar

gerth92

The sway bar bolts broke off in the frame when I went to install the sway bar drop spacers. I have very little hope of installing it back unless I cut out the effected area and weld in new nuts. For now I will try backing off the torsion bar bolt 1 turn at a time and see if the problem getts corrected. From what I had read on here, the sway bar is mainly for body roll when pulling a hard turn. Is that correct? Or does the sway bar do more than that?

Kean

....not just "hard" turns, but generally yes.

Sway bars basically help tie the L/R suspension together helping to stabilize the vehicle. Without one, the left and right suspensions are essentially working independent of one another. This could be good or bad depending on the application. However, in a corner your truck is going to lean noticeably more than it would with one. I might even argue that with your bump steer problem (while maybe not a direct cause), the lack of a sway bar may be compounding the issue as the suspension/steering is upset over those surfaces.

gerth92

I lowered the front end back down. It took 10 turns on the passenger side and 14 turns on the driver side to lower it back down 1 1/4 inches. All the problems at lower speeds are taken care of. At high speeds it still wants to wander some, but not as much. I'll get new tires in a couple months and have it aligned again after that and see if it gets all the way better. The angle on the tie rods looks considerably smaller now.