Two things...shaking steering wheel at 65-70 mph and clunking when I back up

Hello 4Runner Fans!

1. Does anyone have any experience/fixes for a shaking steering wheel at 65-70 mph? Toyota never had a solution. The vehicle is aligned, has had new tires and wheels installed/balanced...blah, blah, blah. It has done this since I bought the car new in 2018.
I feel like it has something to do with the steering mechanism/column? I am willing to pay to fix it, I just need to know if anyone knows what causes this?

2. I had my brakes done by Toyota a little while back and now whenever I back up my driveway (very slight elevation, nothing crazy) and come to a rest before continuing onto the street, the vehicle now makes a "clunk". Pretty much every day I leave my house. I can't say it always does it on a level surface though.

Took it to Firestone because the dealer service is so expensive (Toyota has done all my maintenance to this point because I love my car) but for this I wanted someone else to look at it. FS couldn't recreate the noise and said they check all major components under the car and everything was solid.

I picked up my car on Monday and when parking in my driveway, heard the clunk.

I did some further research and found it could be a possible bad u-joint but I think FS would have found that in their review.

Just looking for any experience or feedback.

I am putting it up on ramps tonight just to see if there is anything I can see. With my very untrained auto mechanic eye.

Thanks!

 

Try this for getting rid of your shimmy. I know you said you've had it balanced but our vehicles are sensitive to balancing and require these things to be properly balanced. A Toyota tech might not take the time to do it right. Make sure to get the run-out numbers so you know if you have a bad tire or not.

https://www.4runners.com/threads/the-official-guide-to-balancing-your-tires.28872/#post-407517

For your clunk, try greasing all the propeller shaft points and see if that helps.

 

Welcome.

Start with the easiest solutions and go from there. If they are aftermarket wheels, make sure that the hub bore is the correct size or a hub centric ring is used to correct an oversized hub bore. This will cause both vibrations and a clunk.

 

You absolutely need to have your tire/wheel assemblies measured on a Hunter machine because you are looking for excessive road force variation...not imbalance. Your problem is likely one tire/wheel assembly on the high side for road force variation or both front tire/wheel assemblies having a moderate level of road force variation. You can't balance out road force variation but since wheels aren't perfectly round either a competent tire shop with a Hunter can line up the stiffest spot on the tire with the lowest point on the wheel and that helps minimize the overall forces from the tire/wheel assembly...but if the road force variation from the tires is too high you're screwed and even match-mounting won't be enough.

This link explains it a bit. Tires are not perfect and the stiffness varies as they rotate. The manufacturers have specs for stiffness variation. 4-Runner may be more sensitive than average to tires with relatively high road force variation; we have no way of knowing. We measured sensitivity to road force variation at the OEM I worked for. The sensitivity is based on many factors like the resonances of major components and subsystems in the front of the vehicle and if you make blind changes you may make it worse. If your vibration is the common oscillating (not vertical) vibration that was called "nibble" where I worked and one way to desensitize the vehicle is to go for a smaller diameter (softer) T-bar in the steering column but I don't know the details of the 4Runner steering system and whether any service parts like softer T-bars are available.

https://thetyreshop.com/road-force-variation/

 

a lot of shops hub centric balance our stock 4runner rims which is wrong and lazy, they need to be lug centric balanced.