kinda squirrely at freeway speeds, steering dampener?

Hi guys, my 03 prerunnner has king coils in the front and 3 link rear, its set up pretty soft. Yesterday doing 75 in the rain, the steering gets kinda twitchy and small adjustments cause lots of body roll. Any way to fix this with say, a steering dampener? My alignment and tire rotation are all normal, but driving freeway speeds gets kinda hairy. thanks

 

what size tires do you have?? You can always get a bigger dampener. I put a heavy duty one on my wrangler

 

265/75r16

i bought this truck used, the tires do seem slightly larger than stock.

 

its just cus your suspension is super soft. you could dampen it but i honestly dont think its going to help. my suspenions real soft and its real twitchy going fast. just gotta have smooth hands

 

Did you install UCAs? If not then your caster can be too low and cause poor handling at higher speeds. Also, do you have the Sway bar still?

 

just went out and checked, stock UCAs, still has sway bar.

found this online:

"With too little positive caster, steering may be touchy at high speed and wheel returnability may be diminished when coming out of a turn."

this is exactly what im experiencing. if i take my truck to a shop, could they fix this pretty easily?

 

In this case a steering stabilizer would be a band-aid on a bigger problem. Unless your trying to stop kick-back from really big tires (and your not) it won't solve your problem. It will just hide it at best.

 

You just bought the truck.... was that your first time on the highway with it?

If yes...then the truck was probably like that when you bought it and it wanders simply because of the suspension setup on it.

Does it have coil springs in the rear? IFS front?

Got any pictures?

Sounds like its a baja style truck and I'm guessing it's the nature of the beast when it comes to that suspension. Hell....we owned a Jeep Grand Cherokee that has solid axles & coil suspension from the factory and that thing feels floaty.

Check all your steering components, ball joints, etc. Also, check the rear suspension components - make sure nothing is loose or coming apart.

 

here's some pictures, i was kinda hoping i could just make small improvements, long drives take a toll when i start losing concentration. but oh well, that's what 5hr energy is for right? =)

 

You need upper control arms to fix the problem.

 

what kind of aftermarket uca do you recommend? id rather not spend a million dollars to fix a slight annoyance, but if its cheap enough ill pull the trigger.

 

They are not very cheap. $528 for the set.

 

ah yeah i just found that set on wheelersoffroad, hmm does look pretty good though. thanks for the help!

 

At the very least take it in, and get the camber set to where it's supposed to be. I'd say you've got a bunch of little problems, that are causing your wandering problems.

UCA's that aren't up to the task
Camber probably way off
Rear suspension that's way softer than stock, causing the truck to ride nose high at speed, worsening your camber problem