05+ V6 Tacoma Steering Rack Bushing replacement

You know you're supposed to loosen the clamp at the top of the lower intermediate shaft, slide it up for enough room?
Even so I found it impossible due to rust, so I cut everything off and replaced everything from the steering wheel down. Royal pain in the butt

 

http://www.customtacos.com/tech.old.../06toyrm/06toypdf/06rmsrc/rm2006ta/045006.pdf
By the clamp do you mean the thing with two bolts in the second picture of that pdf?

 

Managed to get the steering sliding yoke off the first intermediate shaft, which made sliding the second intermediate shaft off the rack much easier. Took a lot of wd40, a hair dryer, and patience.

 

I finished up the job today. Definitely took a long while.

On my test drive I noticed the steering wheel is off by about 90deg. It defaults to point at about 9oclock, and drives pretty straight at that. I’m guessing messed up the alignment when connecting the spline shaft to the intermediate shaft. Question though: can an alignment fix this, or do I have to disconnect the shafts and tinker with the alignment there?

Thanks, John

 

Im guessing you didnt lock the steering wheel? try to center the wheel and then re-connect it with the rack centered. If you leave the wheel like that and go for an alignment now you will be all screwed up.

 

I tied the steering wheel down and marked the upper intermediate shaft, but my mark on the lower intermediate shaft and hydraulic control valve got wiped off, so I think the rack wasn’t straight.

 

guess you will have to go back down there and switch some stuff up till its right again! I would just resecure the steering wheel and eyeball the rack till everythings straight again. When i do stuff like this i usually like to make a small indent in the metal or something, or tap it with a chisel a few times then hit it with a marker.

 

@jovol you'll need to undo your intermediate steering shaft and at least get it mostly straight. I went in to the alignment shop with an upside down steering wheel, and they couldn't do anything with that alignment wise.

 

That's sucks, you're definitely gonna have to figure out where it's off and correct. At least stuff will come apart easy now that it's fresh

 

I adjusted it today and my test drive has it the steering wheel pointing at about 1oclock now

Should I suspect any other issues if my skid indicator light came on (and stayed on)? A did a search and I suspect its because my steering angle 0 point is off. If only I could just read a sensor value to get this all lined up.

 

Seems like you're getting there. Just overdid it by 30 degrees

 

Thank you. I was also having trouble getting the intermediate shaft to separate from the rack, but did not separate the sliding yoke. I will try that next time.

 

It is done. After 3 adjustments the steering wheel is straight.

Trick was to use ratchet straps on the wheel to hold it center. I was just using the seat belt, but it would turn ever to slightly when reconnecting the shafts. Two ratchet straps going to each sides’ pillar hand grab did the trick.

 

How the hell did you do it without loosening the sliding yoke?

 

Never got the intermediate shaft to separate, I ran out of time and had to put stuff back together so I could use the truck the next day. I wasted a bunch of time with a stuck TRE.

 

Wait, you changed the bushings on a 4x4 with the rack still on the truck AND the steering shaft still attached to the rack??? How??

 

Sorry for the confusion - I did not get the bushings installed on my first attempt!

 

Ahh, that makes more sense. Better luck next time!

 

Since I finished up the job, figured I’d post things learned. This is for a 2010 4x4 with 135k miles.
I referenced the service manual at this site: http://www.customtacos.com/tech.old/files/05FSM/repair.html for details and torque values.

1. Much easier to get second intermediate shaft off if you separate it from the sliding yoke first.
2. To get the driver side rack bolt out, I did a combo of loosening the 4 AC compressor bolts and the idler pulley next to the compressor. Cutting the bolt in that tight space while laying on the ground seems like total suckage.
3. To finagle the rack out of the truck, I had to remove one of the big bolts for the front transfer case’s support arm on the passenger side.
4. I loaned out the 5 piece pickle fork set from autozone. One of them was sized perfectly.
5. I added less than one liter of fluid back into the system.
6. Put a matchmark between the intermediate shaft and the steering rack.

Hope that helps future hopefuls. Definitely was a bitch to do, but now I’ve done it once it would be easy to repeat.

 

Nice! But pretty sure you meant front differential and not transfer case