Ive got a 1986 Toyota 4wd that I've had for about 12 years. I had a place where I live work on it, qnd the guy totally messed it up. It was running hot, and had already had the new thermostat put in(the temp sensors weren't but about 6 months or so old), and the water pump was still good. The guy at the shop said it was most likely the head gasket blown. I figured since I already had a new good quality timing chain kit, with new wp and op, that I might as well have him put that on, too. He was supposed to have the head resurfaced, and the valve seals put in, with the new head gasket. Well, got the truck back, qnd it was barely running. Somehow when they put the new plugs in, they hadn't tightened them up enough, qnd it blew one out, and he put about 6 helicoils before he got one to work. He told me later that my head was fine, and he didn't have it resurfaced......I don't even think he checked it at all. Come to find out, they had hooked my battery up backwards(which I'm sure did some damage, that I've not found yet). So here he had been jumping it off, cause the battery was backwards and it wouldn't start. I had him to put in my new 10 piece front end kit...and my new rotors. When you turn right coming out of my driveway, you have to drive almost in the ditch, cause it doesn't cut right. Went to another shop, had it aligned, qnd he said my cv axles were pretty bad(which I already had new ones). He aligned it, then put the new cv axles in, qnd it still doesn't turn right any better. That first shop cost me almost a thousand with close to $800 in parts,and the second shop was about $500. The front end is still messed up, and it pops bad when you turn right pretty far. What could be my problem?

 

Yikes, where to begin…
Did the new front end kit include a pitman arm?
I ran into a similar problem the other day after swapping my steering box. I could not turn full right.
In my case, I had reinstalled the arm on the box, but the box was off about a full turn.
You’ll have to center the wheels, disconnect the pitman arm, run the steering box through the full range of motion, split the difference to center it and then reinstall the pitman arm. There might be an alignment mark on the arm and sector shaft of the box, but cheap arms don’t seem to have the mark as i’ve seen. Minor problem really, but a pita.

 

Had the guy at the shop here check the pitman arm. He said it was exactly lined up. But, the shop that checked it out, to my new grease fitting off the top of the pitman arm, and left it somewhere. I took it to a garage up the road. The guy found out what the problem was in just a few minutes. The original shop that did that all that work, when the took my driver's side lockout off, for some reason, they left out a piece....so even tho the lockout said it was free, it wasn't. It had been locked in the whole time, since they worked on it.