94 22RE 4x4 197k

I just failed my safety inspection, supposedly for a bad idler arm.

I had to fix some other small items, so I took it home to check it myself.

I checked the arm by jacking up the wheels and moving a wheel back and forth (simulating left to right turning at a fast pace). I did not notice any up and down arm movement of the idler arm.

I did notice fore and aft movement in the rod/bolt that goes through the relay arm and is terminated with the crown nut. The bolt certainly moved relative to the idler arm. Is this normal or should the bolt stay perfectly perpendicular to the arm?

Is the arm actually ok?

 

Is the idler arm bent? You can rebuild the idle arm cheap. It's two bushings, I think the dealer price is like $2 something. I got mine off Rock Auto online for half that and the bushings are just as good.

 

The arm is not bent and there does not seem to be motion between the idler arm shaft and the housing. There is motion between the idler arm bolt and the relay arm as I described.

The rebuild kit is for the housing/arm interface, not the arm/bolt interface.

 

http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/maintenance/idler/

 

Are you saying that the castle nut is slipping against the relay rod? That is not normal, and the bolt should be tight against the relay rod. The castle nut might just need to be re-torqued, or the ball joint could be bad making it look like the nut is slipping. If that is the case then you would need a new idler arm.

Check the relay rod to make sure it is not cracked. I believe there was a recall on relay rods for your year because they could crack in cold climates. If you have not had that done then you could just get your local Toyota dealer to take care of the problem for you.