Steering Rag Joint Mod, Phase-1

Caddmannq, anything new? Still working DIY fixes or did you break down and buy the part?

 

Ummm...well actually...

Sept. 17th I was riding my custom-built speed board and a little kid dodged in from out of nowhere. I went off the trail and took a bad spill. I cracked my humerus in two places and dislocated my shoulder. Broke 3 ribs in front & one in back. I didn't know about the fractures, so I stuffed my shoulder back in the socket, got back on the board, rode a mile back to my truck and drove home. Later at the emergency ward they gave me the bad news.

6 weeks of rest and 2 weeks of therapy later I was well enough to go ride my motorcycle across the Mojave desert & back, but my Tacoma hasn't been washed since the accident. Nor have I looked at the steering again.

I am, however, back on the board, both literally and figuratively...

 

Holy shit , glad you are doing better !

 

I am, thanks. Actually I was back on the longboard (gently) within 3 days, but I didn't do any heavy lifting for several weeks also I've also managed to lose almost 40 lbs.

Check out these un-retouched photos of me, taken about 2 years apart.

 

Wow...That sounds like one hell of a tumble. Glad you're doing better.

I asked a dealership to order in the new intermediate shaft today by phone. Going to pick it up Saturday or Monday and install it myself hopefully early next week. I have yet to see where anyone bought one and installed it themselves, so I guess I'll be the guinea pig on that front.

 

great thread Caddman. I'm glad to see your doing so well, and I would have guessed 60ish pounds. Got full shoulder ROM? keep up the good work.

 

I wish I had a video of it. I went through the air like Superman, rolled and landed on my right shoulder & right back-ribs. Then I flipped end-over-end, head down, and landed on my chest and hands, sliding. I had almost no road rash, as I wore plastic sliding pucks on my gloves which took all of the grinding, but the impacts were somewhat severe.

30 minutes later I was driving home in my Tacoma at 50 MPH on the expressway when I started to go into shock. It's an interesting phenomonon if you've never experienced it. Little colored lights started swirling around before my eyes. I stopped & did some deep breathing and continued, and it started again 5 minutes later. As soon as I got home & stepped out of the truck it all cleared up withing 2 steps.

I took a strong shot of liquor, followed by a big chaser of water & aspirin, & called my wife to come drive me to the emergency.

The shoulder is still only about 70% ROM & 50% strength. I've been working on it twice a day for over three weeks now and it's getting slowly but steadily better. I have a touch of arthritis which is not helping. The real trick is knowing how much pain to take without ripping anything.

 

This is an exploded view of the steering assembly in the 05+ tacomas.#6 is the damn rubber rag joint with the rigidity of play doh. #5 is the upper shaft, # 7 and 8 are the lower parts of the shaft. Caddmannq i have done the zip tie jammed between the viton bushing mod, and just recently saw the zip tie truss method, i zipped em tight as i could with my hands, but not tight enough (I HOPE) that it would rip the stupid rubber donut over time. Im considering the gluing the additional stoppers under the other 2 donuts as well, just havent found the time. Also considering gluing the viton bushing.

 

Also Caddmannq, what if we were to wrap those donuts in duct tape, THEN TRUSS with zip ties. Wouldnt that layer of duct tape provide some protection from the zip ties cutting into it? Or even wrapping the zip ties themselves in duct tape where they contact the rubber donut, that I might try. Im wondering if that would affect the way the zip ties stabilize the upper yoke.

 

Really the zip ties were just supposed to be a quick and dirty test to see if it would help. It did & I have gone no further.

HOWEVER:

Those stoppers I used are pretty soft stuff and rebound could be better. The make skateboard bushings of some very high tech urethane in any hardness you could want.

My next step is planned to be replacing the stoppers with urethane bushings, and to remove the zip ties.

My ultimate plan was to simply mold a rubber "truss" in two pieces, wrap them around the rag joint, and secure them with big zip ties or thin gear clamps.

So far it hasn't all bothered me enough to go any farther yet.

 

BTW, with diet & lots of skating I'm down to 175 lbs now.

 

Good to hear about your weight. Are your injuries all healed up fully? Any residual pain or stiffness?

And yes those zip ties definitely help. And with the bushing replacements. Are you talking actually removing the stock donuts and replacing em. Or removing the ones you inserted in there?

I'm also looking to come up with a permanent, easy to install solution, as opposed to wrapping and filling the entire joint with sealant, or wrapping the entire joint in a wad of duct tape or metal pieces.

 

Wow...

I bet your Nomad is MUCH happier now... I probably wouldn't recognize you if it weren't for the new pictures!

(Rich from BTK/Delphi/LAVROC... lead a lot of the "Wild Snails" rides in '08 and early '09)

 

The whole world is happier now that I lost weight, Rich.

Or so it seems....

BTW, I find that at my age I can build muscles as fast as I want with the right techniques, but the joints and tendons take like 10x longer to catch up. I can easily overpower them and have been suffering some minor tendonitis the past months, due to training too hard.

My podiatrist told me to forget about riding in the Adrenelina Skateboard Marathon (26.2 miles) and it was such a gas to get invited to ride in the masters division. Frankly I'm still gonna do it. It'll just take 3 more years of slower training.

Also, the Nomad: I'm in the process of trading my beloved Nomad for a Vulcan 2000cc with LT gear. Owned by a friend, 10 years my senior, who needs to downsize a bit in his Golden Years. This is the bike & my bud Top Dawg, in 2005:

 

subbed

 

The shoulder is nearly 100% The Achilles tendons are a bit tender, but recovering nicely. I was skating up to 20 miles before I strained them about 10 weeks ago. I'm working my way back slowly and I did a solid 6 mile run yesterday with almost no pain at all. Hell, I was diggin' it!


As for the rubber bushings I want to replace the ones I inserted (made from test tube stoppers) with some harder urethane bushings. They're about the same size as the stoppers.

(Another photo of the Dawg. I took this, and he credits this photo with finding his new wife. She's about 20 years younger than him. )

 

That's excellent man... and good call on the upgrade. The 1500 Nomad will go as long as you take care of it, but yours has got to be getting up over 200k by now and she's got to be getting tired.
The V2K is a sweet ride, and I'm sorry I didn't get one instead of my '06 1600.

You can always add a WOC fairing, Nomad hardbags, and a Scootworks Trunk (like I did, except I went with Tsukayu bags).

Just watch the bag attachments and reinforce them... I broke one of my fender strut bolts on the way home from work... then munged the threads with the drill prepping for the Easy-Out... then BROKE the Easy-Out when the bolt backed into the damaged threads.

My option is now to strip the luggage rack/trunk, remove the fender, and try to drive the broken bolt out toward the tire. If that is successful, then I have to decide if I just want to re-tap to repair that hole, or drill them all out and tap everything to 10mm.

Sadly, she's been sitting like that for a year since I've had too much going on to work on her.

 

If you have been struggling with a clunk, shake, or vibration felt in your steering wheel that is most pronounced at slow speeds on rough roads and trails, then this fix may work for your truck. I bought my 2014 back in November of 2013, and within 300 miles I felt a clunk in the steering wheel driving on the icy roads in my neighborhood. It was much more pronounced in the spring when I took the truck off road, so I did a lot of searching on the web and first tried the zip tie mod. In the 12,000 miles since, I have tried zip ties in varying thicknesses, numbers, and positions; the elimination of the rubber disk in the rag joint by rebuilding my upper intermediate shaft with bolts, spacers, washers, and nuts;adjusting the tilt and telescoping of the wheel away from the extreme points/stops; the TSB intermediate shaft; adjusting the steering rack guide screw; lower tire pressure; replacing the sway bar bushings; and even the building my own custom rubber damper for the shaft using hose clamps and the rubber from bicycle grips. None of these ideas has produced the kind of result I discovered when I did the fix documented below. I got the idea from a 4Runner thread that seemed to recommend making the opposite adjustment (pushing the yoke and shaft up), which I tried and determined it only made the problem worse. Shoving zip ties/other stuff in there or welding/taking the rag joint out, in my opinion, creates a conductor for vibrations to travel up between the rack and the wheel.

But to first understand why this particular fix works, you need to know that the either the soft rubber bushings that hold the steering rack to the frame and/or frame and body flex are allowing the steering shaft to be pushed towards the steering wheel by 1/4” or more on bumps. Just look at the grease spot below the bushing on your rag joint to see evidence of this. The only thing taking up the slack and preventing you from feeling this is the rubber disk of the rag joint (also called steering coupler). Replacing the steering rack bushings on a brand new truck seems a little ridiculous and is a rather extensive project, so this fix seems like the next best thing. I am also concerned that replacing the steering rack bushings with harder ones would subject the rack to harsher impacts and more wear, so I’ll stick with this for now. I would, however, be interested in hearing from anyone who replaced the rack bushings on a low-mileage Tacoma to learn how it improved their steering.

Next, it is my belief that the driver feels the clunk when rubber in the rag joint compresses enough that the steering shaft has nowhere else to go and then moves laterally. The fix I have discovered unloads the rag joint and gives it more room to absorb impacts. I think the shaft pushes up towards the driver more than it pulls back down, so setting it a few mm more against the direction it moves gives it more space before it bottoms out. In some rough off road driving, I would estimate it has taken out 90% of the clunk and vibration on climbs and level ground and 70% of the same on descents, when the front of the truck and steering rack have more weight on them. I have been told by folks at two dealerships and even an independent Toyota service center that all of these trucks clunk. I have read similar remarks on other posts on Tacoma World and elsewhere. I hope this helps some of you relieve your clunk and reduce it to more livable levels of vibration. To do this, you may need a helper to assist you in holding the rag joint down under the dash while you tighten the upper bolt on the yoke under the hood/over the wheel. You are essentially shortening the shaft slightly as you move the upper shaft closer to the lower shaft in the yoke, and the best results may be seen with a brand new TSB shaft with a tight bushing, but I have not tried that yet. Please let me know how this turns out for you and how much it improves your steering.

 

Interesting, i will have to try this!