Following is an excerpt from one of the initial reviews about the '03 4Runner steering:

"the light steering has a tendency to wander a bit, requiring lots of little minor steering corrections"

This also describes the steering on my '98 very well. Is there any way to correct this?

 

Try different tires, mine wandered like crazy until I got new "good quality" tires.

 

You could be out of alignment. Might want to check that before you spend some money on tires. But I've heard some of the cheap tires aren't round (like the Schwab tires). I've also heard the same of MT/R's.

 

I bought the '98 a little over a year ago and the first thing I did was put on a good set of tires and have it aligned. It's been the same since the beginning, and a couple friends of mine that have 4Runners have the same comment about theirs.

If a brand new vehicle has this sensation (as per the review) it seems it's probably more design related. I was hoping since the 'light steering' sensation appears to have been around for awhile there had been some aftermarket fix developed. For instance like adding/changing a steering damper (does it already have one from the factory?) or a variable rate power steering pump or something similar that would firm up the steering response at highway speeds.

It's also been suggested to me that stiffening up some of the suspension bushings and increasing the rear sway bar size might help.

 

My steering wanders on my 93 4Runner as well. In my situations it seems to depend on the road. It does it sometimes on the highway when there appears to be grooves from heavy usage. My truck wanders back and forth in the grooves. I don't know what'll stop it but I'm going to get a new steering dampener and alignment and call it good.