[ggifford]

My left rear toe is at .90 degrees while the right rear toe is at .13 The LR is what really concerns me as I just had to replace a set of tires (they gave me an 80% prorate tread wear warranty thankfully) after only 6K miles (and I rotated them after 3K). The LR is the one way out of spec but the inside of the RR wore insanely fast. Since the rear is a fixed axle and is not toe adjustable, what could have caused this, and what might I need to look at repairing/ replacing? This is a Florida FJ with (unfortunately) no real offroading since my ownership, no hard hits, no accidents. I cannot speak for the previous owner although I somewhat trusted his word on the no accidents thing, has a clean carfax, had no evidence of serious offroading when I bought it from him at 21K. Oh yea, another tid bit. The previous owner was on his second set of tires when I bought it off him. I got him down another grand on the price because that second set was toast. Basically, this FJ is going through a set of tires every ten thousand miles. Suggestions/ advice anyone? Thanks in advance.:bandit:

 

[cnckart]

You either have a bent link(s) or a bent axle housing.

 

[ggifford]

Thank you for the quick reply. By links, do you mean the trailing arms? These look pretty easy to put a straight edge on and see if they're bent. How could I find out if my axle housing is bent if it is not visually apparent. Pardon my novice-ness here.

 

[GS-RON]

One bent link would cause the FJ to "crab" down the road. If both lowers were bent it would rotate the bottom of the axle forward. This might cause a driveline vibration but not a "toe" problem. I'm sorry to say, but your axle housing is most likely bent.

A good drivetrain shop that builds axles should have the tools to check it. The problem is it requires complete disassembly (the axle can still be in the truck but it needs to be gutted) of the axle to check. Good thing is you're halfway there to putting the guts back in a straight housing.

 

[madmechanic]

bent links wouldn't cause the toe to be off. the only way that could happen on a solid axle is for the housing to be bent. sorry for the bad news.

 

[BellyDoc]

A straight axle housing would be accurate enough that the positive toe variation on one side would closely approximate the negative toe on the other side, if a link (or two) were bent and the (otherwise straight) axle was tracking at an angle.

I don't know what the tolerance is on toe variation, but with .9, there's no way to get the axle aligned so that there's less than about .45 degrees on both sides, and with stock rigid links, that's not even an adjustable parameter anyhow. .45 is not likely to be an acceptable result.

When people bend rear axle housings, there's usually a crushing force involved. It's basically from jumping and landing or similar forces most of the time. I would expect this to mess with camber and not just toe. Is your camber out, too? Did you get that number?

 

[ggifford]

Problem solved. It was indeed a bent axle housing. I found one with only 7K road miles on it from another Forum member, replaced it with the help of a friend, and now all four wheels are in spec. Thanks for the input everyone.

 

[tsy87]

wow... did you ever find out how it happened?