BMarino

Hey what's up people,

I present to you my recently aquired (1 month ago) Toyota 1994 Pickup 4x4 extracab. It's a 4 cylinder, manual transmission. 240k miles. Found it in the distant mexican state of Michoacán, where it had been living a farming life in the rural countryside since 2008 when it was imported to Mexico from California. I'll be using this truck for work in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains in northeastern Mexico (I'm a biologist), so I just begun the process of giving it proper maintentance which was mostly neglected to this great pickup. Farmers in rural central Mexico are fond of old Toyota pickups, but due to these trucks' resistance, they don't give them much maintenance.

Here it is:

https://www.yotatech.com/g/picture/9738264
https://www.yotatech.com/g/picture/9738265
https://www.yotatech.com/g/picture/9738266

Overall the truck was in great shape when found. Bad points were: solidified sludge in motor oil cap, overly burned motor oil, who knows when last oil change made, plain and rusty water in the radiator, no thermostat, the motor surging idle problem, and a faulty starter. Overall, small nuisances for a 28 year old work truck. Frame with no rust at all, motor sound was good, apparently no chain rattle sound. There was also a what I thought was only a pretty bad alignment problem (truck pulled very strongly towards one side when not holding steering wheel, more on that later). But 4wd was working marvellously, good motor power, good shape working suspension (although rear shocks seem to be the original ones 28 years old), and transmission in good shape.

So far I have thoroughly flushed the radiator and filled with Toyota Red Long Life coolant, made a filter and 2 oil changes, fixed the starter, added an OEM thermostat, and was about to fix the surging idle problem but it has gradually finally disappeared by itself (must be the new loving treatment the truck's now receving ). Oh, and I fixed a fractured alloy wheel, was leaking air at a fast rate (also, no replacement wheel/tire, was stolen years ago). Fortunately truck is fitted with new 31" BFGoodrich Mud Terrain tires, which resist very low psi ranges.

Now for the bad news: when taking it to an alignment shop, they told me the frame was bent somewhere in the front driver's side which made it impossible to align. And actually, the front driver's wheel was pulled back towards the back of the wheel well, which caused bad rubbing from the tire against the well metal when turning left. So I took it to another shop, where they turned the knobs on the lower control arm and managed to position the wheel on its almost correct position, and no more rubbing ensued. Actually now the steering wheel is perfectly aligned and truck doesn't pull to any side. This was done entirely by eyesight, no alignment machines or software or platforms used.

So I went to a Toyota dealer in Mexico City, where they inspected the frame to find the exact spot where it is bent. Turns out that the left lower control arm mount is slightly, but noticeably, bent towards the inside and up. Also, the left front differential mount or support (the cilindrical shaped one, see pic below) is bent upwards and slightly laterally. Another thing: the left torsion bar is, at what is noticeable from the front wheel well, noticeably SANDWICHED between the frame and the cabin metal.

It isn't very noticeable in pictures, but here they are:

http://centrinvor.org/ControlArm1.jpg
http://centrinvor.org/ControlArm2.jpg
http://centrinvor.org/ControlArm3.jpg
http://centrinvor.org/Base4x4.JPG
http://centrinvor.org/TorsionBar.jpg

In addition to that, the left front tire is noticeably standing "more inside" of the wheel well when compared to the right front tire, which is standig "more outside" of the well.

Pictures of that:
http://centrinvor.org/FrontTire1.jpg
http://centrinvor.org/FrontTire2.jpg


So here's the thing: considering the truck drives perfectly straight on the road, the steering wheel is straight, and I've noticed no suspension problems so far (there do is a soft noticeable "torsion" sound on turning situations, which I suspect come from the sandwiched torsion bar), I'm strongly considering on not letting anyone put hand on the truck's frame in an attempt to fix it. The mere idea of trying to succesfully find a trustable frame repair shop in Mexico, and I mean trustable by my obsessive and perfectionist standard, totally obliterates the possibility of feeling that the truck will come out of a frame shop in better shape than how it is now. Also, the bend as I stated seems to be just on the control arm mount, not on the main frame, and it seems to me those mounts are susceptible to breaking from trying to unbend them, or at least susceptible to lose substantial resistance if furtherly tampered with. As I said, I'm going to subject this truck to work, which implies driving 8/10 in the sierra fire roads, service roads, trails, river crossings, dry stony river beds, up and down all day long. So basically I'm here trusting on these old truck frames' overbuilt and legendary resistance and capacity to withstand heavy work even with having those bent spots. Any opinion on this would be greatly appreciated.


Now to the other issue: the steering relay rod recall hasn't been serviced on this truck, so I'm also attending that with the Mexico City dealer. However, they have NEVER attended ANY work on this truck model (Toyota started business in Mexico from 2005 onwards). In fact I encountered resistance from practically all other mexican Toyota dealers, which declined on carrying on this service on my truck. The thing is, Toyota dealers work only with official instructions and technical references. In fact, when they checked the frame, they did so only as an "unofficial" check because they don't have access to spec sheets on their database. Even when I handed them the body dimensions sheet I sourced from the original manual, they said they weren't authorized to use sources not from their own databases.

So the thing is, this steering relay rod issue is a serious one, considering that the frame situation is maybe extra stressing out the steering components, and I'm worried that the dealership won't even know the torque specs for all the nuts and bolts which are involved in its replacement. So I'd really appreciate it if someone here could hand me those torque specs, or guide me as to where I might find them.

I'm also gonna change both upper and lower ball joints on both sides, as well as both tie rods. Torque specs for these would be very helpful. In fact, torque specs for everything are gonna be useful!


Finally, some photos on the present situation on the tie rods. The left tie rod is noticeably in what seems to me an abnormal angle, when compared to the right side one. I don't know if this is a result of the frame issue, but I'm hoping it is just a bad installation issue. Here are some pics. Again, any opinion on this will be appreciated. Anyway, they are gonna be swapped for new OEM ones.

Left tie rod:
http://centrinvor.org/TieRod1.jpg

Right tie rod:
http://centrinvor.org/TieRod2.jpg



Thanks a lot for any feeback, and cheers from Mexico!