joeprokop

I am the only owner of a 2000 Toyota 4Runner SR5 with a sixcylinder engine. It now has 200,080 miles on it.

I desire to hold on to my 4Runner for as long as possible. I treat it very well and try to do all of my own maintenance on it.

In June 2012, I had new BF Goodrich 16" tires on the vehicles via a local BJs. 16" tires it what it came with when I bought it.

A month later, I ran over a 6"x6" piece a metal that was dropped on the highway. I ran it over at highway speeds around 60mph. Two miles later, I was forced to pull over and change the left front tire. When I changed the tired, I did not torque the lug nuts on the full sized spare enough before getting it looked at an alignment shop, five miles away. It made some pretty heinous grinding noise. But then the alignment shop tightened it up to spec, the noise went away; but I had some highway shimmy.

Since the tires were only a month old, BJs replaced just the one tire free of charge under the road hazard warranty. They balanced the new tire and for about 2 days every seemed fine and then the highway shimmy starting coming back. I took it back to BJs and they rebalanced all four tires. Again, the problem went away for 3 days and then came back, again. So this time I went to shop that knew hub-centric tires and had a Hawkewa plate adaptor to balance the tires. The problem went away again for about 4 days and the shimmy came back again.

So I decided to replace rotors and brake pads with OEM stuff. Did that, but because a bolt was seized, had to disconnect brake lines to get calipers off. I bled calipers after the work. All shimmy associated with braking seemed to be gone, but sometimes my brakes grab harder than normal at very slow speeds. I re-bled about a month ago and it helped with this symptom, low speed intermittent grab not completely gone, but the vehicle is still very drivable,no braking capability lost. Unfortunately, my highway shimmy did not go away.

Then decided to buy Moog Lower Ball Joints and Outer Tie Rod Ends, Monroe Quik Struts for the front and Monroe Shocks for the back and put them all in. (Had to cut out rear shocks, that was a challange) , drove my car to PepBoys for an alignment. They did the alignment OK, but my steering wheel is about 10 degrees off, slightly annoying but bearable. The Monroe Quik Struts lifted up the frontend about 1.5 inches, which the label warned would happen and go away over time (it has been five months and I still feel my SUV is slightly higher in the front). I did torque down the three upper nuts and the lower bolts on the struts while front end was not under load, I bring this up as I mention it later in this brief. I also rotated the front tires to the back and the back tires to the front. All highway shimmy seemed to disappear and has not come back.

But about two months ago, we got some good rain and Istarted to get a noise when turning. It went away for the most part after the rain dried up. I also get the noise when turning sharply to the left or rightwhen there are centrifugal forces wanting to resist the turn. It is worse when I get a change in elevation. What I mean is, when driving downhill, turning a 90 degree right into a housing complex where I immediately start going backuphill. Also, get the "clunk" when backing out of my driveway. To explain, my driveway slopes down and then the street crowns back up. If I leave my house pulling straight back, no noise. If I turn my wheels to get my rear to steer to the left and my front wheels go over the slight driveway curb at different moments, I get the "clunk" noise.

So then I put in new half shafts in the front in order to have new constant velocity joints and put new oil as per OEM spec in the front differential. The noise did not go away when turning. The following week, I got new front sway bar middle bushings and special lubricant for these bushings and put them in. That also did not fix the problem.

I removed my struts, then tightened the spring damper nut to Toyota service manual spec, reinstalled to hand tight the upper three nuts on bearing plate and lower bolt on damper. Lowered SR5 to deck and then tightened all strut assembly nuts/bolts while vehicle front end under load. Seemed to help for about four days, but "clunk" came back.

Just this last week, I put un new sway bar end links with associated bushings, and since I am writing this now, that also did not fix the problem.

So my question is, what should I do next? The best part is,the noise is intermittent.

DRCOFFEE

Check your sway bar links. Mine looked fine when parked but one day i was under the truck and noticed the link broke between the bushings. It would pop/bang when making turns up a curb.

Also, by driving with loose lug nuts on alloy wheels, you probably enlarged the holes so it keeps going out of balance. The tires are balanced but the wheels keep losing their center of rotation.

joeprokop

Good points Dr Coffee....but I just changed out the sway bar end links last Friday and the loose lug nuts were only on my full sized spare steel rim, not my alloy rims which had the highway shimmy.

DRCOFFEE

I'll just keep adding to the possibilities, maybe something will help. I have read many members who used Moog LBJs had repeated failures of the LBJ in months, not years. maybe go back and install Toyota LBJ and tie rods, inner and outer. Also, if you only changed the outer TR, this could have damaged the inners.

tantacoma

When I did this (drove on non-torqued lug nuts) I trashed the studs on that hub. Couldn't torque them anymore, and the 6 studs had to be replaced.

joeprokop

Dr. Coffee, yeah, I am starting to see more threads trashing Moog LBJs...failing at the same time mine did, around four months after install. Might have to suck up buying OEMs, the good news is I have experience installing them now. Does the fact that the noise gets worse in the rain mean anything though?

Tantacoma, what do you mean you could no longer torque them? I am still able to get 83 ft lbs per lug without a problem. When I say loose lug nuts, I think I was only a little loose. The short wrench Toytota gives us can be difficult to get good torque. Especially putting my alloy lugs on the steel spare. And I was stuck on our beltway changing out the left front tire on the right shoulder when the road banks to the left (speed limit even lowers to 45mph which no one heeds) Talk about stressful!