I am new here and to all of this, so forgive me if there is missing info, and forgive me for lack of exact terms and knowledge. I bought my 2019 Toyota tacoma sport 4dr long bed like 2.5 Ish years ago. I went through the set of tires that were on it pretty quickly, they were maybe half life, don’t know for sure, didn’t measure and didn’t expect these issues. The second set lasted 7 months and 7,000 miles. Yes, both of those were with a heavy foot, and I have fixed that. This third set I’ve had for 1.5 years and 10,000 miles and they are almost needing to be replaced. They are wearing a good amount more in the outisde than the inside even though I’ve had regular rotations/balancing and alignment checks.


Today I took it in with the tire eating concerns, and a couple other concerns.
-The driver rear side seems to sit lower than the passenger rear side sometimes, especially noticeable when towing my ATV trailer with it. The trailer is all aluminum and small, and it only has 2 ATV’s on it, so the whole setup can’t be more than 2,500 lbs gear fuel and all.
-The truck in 2WD is way worse in any slick conditions than any other rear wheel drive vehicle I’ve ever had. Like you can feel the back end shifting side to side A LOT more than you would expect and it’s a safety concern.

The tire shop said that my right rear tires toe is off 2 degrees. I asked for the printout, but they didn’t charge me anything and didn’t do the rotation or alignment because of what they found, and didn’t have a printout for me. I am almost thinking that he meant 2 degrees of positive camber since that’s how the tires are wearing, and what it sounded like he was describing when we talked. It does appear that both the left and right side rear tires are both wearing in the same manner, more wear on the outer part of the tires/more tread in the inner part of the tires. He was saying something about the driver side being off causing the passenger side to also be off, or bent axle or frame.

none of this sounds good. Just to add too, the only time I notice anything off when driving the truck is in slippery conditions it has absolutely crappy traction in 2WD.

many thoughts on this and how to proceed? I’d appreciate any and all comments and feedback.

thank you.

 

I figured I should come here and update you all.

I took it to an off road shop near me yesterday and they checked it out. The driver rear is positive toe 1.78 degrees while the passenger rear toe is -0.24…. Diagnosis is a bent axle…. It is a restored title, and we checked the vin on google to see the accident that totaled it, and it was hit hard on the driver rear pushing the axle forward. They must’ve replaced all the suspension and not spent much time checking(or caring about) the driver rear toe.. of course they had it inspected, and I hear that protects them from liabilities like these. Does anyone know if that’s true? Or do I have a leg to stand on for getting the dealer to replace the axle? I’ve had it for 2.5 or so years.

so that shop is quoting me $2,500 for a used axle off a Tacoma that is totaled from a front end collision with 66k miles(mine has 27k miles) with a 12k mile 12 month warranty. Total after labor and tax is $3,700 to replace the axle. Does this sound reasonable?

I’ll share photos of the alignment report, and the report that the tire shop gave me in my paperwork when buying the first set of tires from them. It does show the same rear toe issue and they didn’t catch it/didn’t say anything. The second set of tires looking at the report it looks like they didn’t even hook up the rear tires, so nothing is shown for them, shared that report also.

any advice or comments here would be greatly appreciated.

thank you.

 

Personally, id grab an axle off marketplace or a junkyard and swap it my self... Not too hard of a job.

Also, If you copy and paste here, it makes your font really hard to read. You could try changing the font color so it more readable.

 

Oh? I had no idea about the copy/paste issue. I had posted this in another thread so just copied my update to here. I made it bold, did that help??

That’s a good idea, I just do not have the time to do any of that. I googled around for junkyard axles(which the shop is also getting a used axle) and it seems their price is not far off from what I could buy myself. I’m sure if I waited I’d come across a deal eventually, but I’ve got to get it fixed.

Maybe I’m just a crappy monkey wrencher, but whenever I do something like that and tell myself it won’t be that bad there’s always little things that get me hung up and it takes too long and there’s no turning back once it’s apart lol.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger and gave them 50% up front so they can get the axle sent to them. I do have a warranty that’s supposed to cover stuff like this, but they say it’s kind of hard to get them to actually cover stuff… so we will see. If they don’t I’m gonna cancel it. You can cancel and they pro-rate it and give you back the money for the years you have left.

thank you.