Weird Handling

I recently purchased a 2014 t4r with 14K miles on it. Everything about it was stock. I've had many, many SUV's in the past and traded in my 2007 Sequoia for this 4runner.

This has been the smoothest and most responsive SUV I've owned, but something feels weird about the steering. If I hit anything on just one side of the vehicle (standing water, pot hole, variations in the road) I can feel it in the steering and the vehicle wants to pull in that direction. I've had this with significant amounts of standing water with other SUV's, but this 4runner is the worst I've ever experienced, it feels dangerous.

In other vehicles and SUV's, they usually track pretty straight down the highway even if there are some minor "ruts" in the road, like that are made from heavy truck use, etc. In the 4runner, if it gets slightly out of that rut, it will pull hard to one side. The truck is all over the road when changing lanes.

Another data point is that I can feel something "clicking" or "thunking" in the steering wheel when at a standstill, say waiting at a red light. I can feel an intermittent thunk, it feels to me like something is up with the power steering pump? It has the proper level of fluid and the fluid is nice and clean. I've owned this vehicle for about 3 months, this thunking seems to be getting more frequent. It's light enough of a thunk that I can't feel it when moving, only when stopped.

Since I bought the vehicle, I've added a 3.5" lift and new tires. It was behaving like this without any of these mods, and I thought perhaps they'd find something when they installed the lift and I was hoping an alignment might fix it, but didn't. Then finally I was banking on the new tires, but nothing has made an impact.

I'm afraid my next step is to take it to the dealer, but I'm trying to check what I can on my own so I can go in a little more educated because I'm sure they'll say nothing is wrong (since it's under warranty).

Any ideas??

 

What you're describing sounds like it could be due to or contributed to from:

Too little caster. Fix: have an alignment shop add caster, will likely need aftermarket UCAs to aid in gaining caster
wide LT tires. Fix: run narrower tires
more negative wheel offset than stock wheels. Fix: run wheels with the least amount of negative offset required to give enough tire clearance.
Worn steering components (steering rack, tierod ends, etc). Fix: determine if there is any play in the steering components and replace as necessary.

 

Odd that you say it handled that way before you got the lift. Everything you described points to what @Relentless said. Your lift, tires, and lack caster are most likely the culprit.