Steering wheel shake and pull. KO2s to blame?

I always ran bf good rich AT ko2’s and never had cupping, weird. And the shimmy isn’t normal at all, it’s a flaw some 4 runners have and plenty don’t. My 2022 does it, my parents 2019 doesn’t, and I asked plenty of people in person that I see in parking lots with them so far and the NO’S are winning. Never had a tire road force balanced In my life until I tried it with this 4 runner and never had a issue with regular balancing.

 

Thank you for this insight. I will give this a try.

 

Guys please go to Discount Tire that has latest Balancing Machines I had mine balanced at ORW 3 times ( one of them was different branch so I could get second opinion) and they replaced the tires ‍♂️ But shimmy was still existent so instead of going back to them I went to DT in Mira Mesa cause someone suggested it, it was $80 for balance work or going back and forth to ORW where I could just hope that they could get the balancing right or hear them saying this is “normal” for these car& tires. I was even told “what do you expect this is 4x4 “ I kinda loosing hope because if they can’t get it right then I couldn’t imagine other places would get it right. Apparently I was wrong, DT got the front tires balanced and it only took couple mins for them. No shimmy now like I had before.

 

And how many mines / months has it been good now? And why only the fronts.

 

So far about 800 miles. But the point I was trying to make when one shop can’t balance the tires other shop could which is weird to me as an educated consumer but a newbie off roader

 

I went through
1. Dealer @ 30 miles -> said all 4 were out of balance road force balance ok
2. My friends off-road shop that balances 35 inch tires and above on a normal balancer, never has issues. Made mine worse ‘shimmy wise’
3. Tire place I went to for 13 years. ‘Road force balanced’Acted the same as dealer balance, but once rotated was the worst it has ever been.
4th will be the next unlucky person who buys my 4 runner soon off a dealer lot

any place I ever had purchased tires from and had mounted / balanced I never had a issue in my life until this specific vehicle. The odds are against the vehicle in my case. Bad balance doesn’t come and go as it pleases.

 

I truly believe it’s up to the technician to diagnose the issue whether it’s one of the front parts or tires even wheels. There should be a process off elimination where they just try one thing and see if it improve. Seems like most shops don’t give a damn, for a brand new car there should not be a problem though so my issue seems like the shops incompetence , since another shop could fix it by just spending couple mins. I might even be one of the unlucky ones as well, some folks never have these issues with their 4runners. At the end I don’t know whether it’s the shop, toyota itself or the tires I’d hate to spend another minute trying to get this right on a brand new vehicle that I just bought.

 

Wow. So sorry to read this dilemma on a 50k truck. Bought my 4R because of the resale values.
Kind of getting used to it now.
4K miles so far. Smooth ride. Went up to 90M/hr to try it out on the freeways. No shimmy

Running the skinny OEM tires.
I really wanted the more aggressive ToyoAT3/BFG K02 - Luckily my local tire shop owner refused to install any aggressive tires.
Told me the 4Runnners are sensitive to any wheel tires changes. He was trying to explain the technical terms to me.

I will eventually switch to skinny Bridgestone Bliz for inclement weather since mine isn't a fulltime 4WD

He owns a highlander too.

 

I’d love to know his reasoning on 4runners are sensitive. What does it even mean? It’s a machine lol

 

Based on the number of threads we see almost daily asking about vibrations after tire/wheel 'upgrades', I'd say the tire shop @LuLu went to knew exactly what they were talking about.

 

I'm not driving a 4R if I can't add bigger tires. I could drive a RAV4 or Highlander if I wanted something boring. Some wheel shimmy should probably be expected with bigger tires. There are always going to be tradeoffs when modding a vehicle.

 

I drove plenty of vehicles with 35’s that were not 4 runners and were pretty damn smooth…with no shimmy either

 

I drove 5 Jeeps and none had a shimmy, but the 4R is still a better riding vehicle. It’s far from perfect, but I know there isn’t a perfect vehicle.

 

2001 Tahoe LT…wish I could get a new one again

 

Yeah they don’t make them like they used to.

 

1 reason why I am holding on to that thing…still pretty solid for a NY salt belt old Chevy. 4 runner was the last SUV that could match it the best look wise even being smaller. Love the non aerodynamic body’s!

 

Yeah I love my Nautical Blue. Wish I chose white, but man the NB is a great color in person.

 

I love the blue. It’s what my next pick up is gonna be as well. Could never have white. Some love it some can’t have it

 

Its as hard to keep in good shape as black. Thats why I like white.

 

Some company should research and make a steering stabilizer shock for the 4runner if thats possible to fit under there. I bet that would end most the shimmy problems encountered.

 

In the Jeep world those are considered bandaids.

 

Really? Jeeps come with steering dampers stock, which would suggest steering is prone to get upset by design (as in a lot of front solid axle vehicles). A buddy had his stabilizer shock go out on him on his 17 rubicon. He could tell because it would get upset after bumps. He put off replacement until he got full-on death wobble at around 50mph. Then he bought a replacement shock

 

I still remember the first time I got the death wobble in my lifted XJ going down the NJ Turnpike at 80mph. Almost crapped myself. Thought the whole front end was going to be torn off the car. Scary.

 

I should have said they are necessary bandaids because Jeeps steering is shit.

 

Has anybody ever noticed a correlation between toe-in and steering shimmy on 4runners?

I’ve heard it said that a good alignment shop will dial it in with slight toe-in, anticipating that the resistance at cruising speed will push the tires out to zero toe (due to the cumulative slop and/or flex in all the moving parts).

Bear with me here…What if there is a toe-in value, where at a certain speed, the parts responsible for steering are “unloaded”.

For example, if the steering knuckle/tie-rod interface had 2mm total slop (hypothetically speaking, and for ease of math), there might be a certain speed at which the drag on the tires gets that interface to have 1mm on each side of the knuckle/cup. Being in the middle of the the clearance range (the ball floats in the middle, not against one side or the other) may allow for small imbalances to amplify and work their way the next interface. Im using the steering knuckle as a hypothetical, because their could be other part interfaces that could cause shimmy, or more likely, the total lash in the whole system could be the issue.

Maybe changing toe in value slightly might keep the interface between all parts in the steering tight against each other at cruising speed, and not allow small momentary force to amplify down the chain.

Heck, maybe it’s even possible that, as the vehicle speed up to where toe-in approaches perfect zero, the tires will also be experience zero lateral load, which might be contributing or causing the shimmy.

I didnt stay at a holiday in last night, but as far as I know, any resonance is a wave with equal energy at each side of the wave (think sine wave). Having some load on the entire steering system (by inducing tension from non-zero toe in) essentially boxes that sine wave in on one side…no more wave, no more shimmy.

Am I making any sense with how Im explaining my theory?

 

To be fair, didn’t solid front axle Land Cruisers come stock with steering dampers?

 

The wranglers may have shit steering with the shitty steering gear box’s but they don’t shimmy lol…driving my friends lifted wrangler was nice on straight smooth roads but damn that thing needed constant correction. I would be fatigued on a long drive. But it looooks cooool!

 

@Labrunner - thank you sir for the great advice. I followed exactly what you mentioned here on this thread. I went heavily armed to discount tire (box of donuts, some 20's and got myself inside the shop and did it with the techs) and sure enough shimmy is gone. Maybe a little something is there....but for the most part is gone. I am super happy. You nailed this completely.

 

I will take a minor shimmy all day long over death wobble.

 

Keeps us updated as days go on!