Tacoma drives like a boat!

Ok so I just lifted my 08 ACC TRD off-road with a 3" icon set up with icon uca's and I'm running 285/75/16 cooper discoverer stts. I got an alignment and my truck drives like a boat now. The steering is very vague and slow to respond. And I wander and I'm affraid to take corners going the speed limit. I've never lifted a truck before so i don't know how it is supposed to feel. Is This normal? The best way I can describe it is just like a boat. And when I turn and then turn the wheel to straighten back out, it will kind of fight against me like it wants to keep turning and then when I finally get it straight, I experience alittle body roll. I'll attatch my alignment specs. I got it aligned with wheel spacers on and then I took them off. Could that affect it too? Thanks guys!

 

Take it back! Your Caster needs to be pushed as far forward as possible. +3.0 is a pretty happy place on mine. Do you have aftermarket UCAs?

 

Yes I do have icon uca's

 

Does the camber and toe look right at least? And does the rear have much role to play?

 

My caster is 2.4 and it drives pretty well with a 2.5" lift and 265/70 tires. You need more than me. Shoot for 2.8 or 3. Problem solved.

 

Needs more positive Caster

 

Will my icon uca's allow for that much adjustment?

 

Yes. They have Caster correction of at least 1 deg. Your lower adjusters will have enough adjustment to reach good caster numbers with those arms. Chances are that your alignment tech set your caster to stock config during your first attempt

 

Makes sense! The rear feels a tad bit squirrelly as well. What might that be? Do the bigger more aggressive tires have something to do with it?

 

Get them to get to 0/0/3.0 Toe/Camber/Caster.

 

My caster is at 2, the place I took it to was too lazy to change it. (They wouldn't becacause it was in-spec.)

however, I did get them to set my camber to -.5. The truck handles MUCH better, it used to feel like it wanted to plow through corners, now it's much more stable feeling.

The caster will make it feel like it wants to wander, the camber will affect how it feels in the corners. Set it to 0 or a bit negative.

 

I thought caster increased high speed stability even through corners?

 

Looks like your back end is set a tiny bit farther forward on the left side than on the right side (total mismatch is about 0.10 in by my calculation). That's resulting in the axle being off true by 0.10 degrees, which is what's giving you those toe readings on the back end (toe should be 0.00 on both sides with a solid axle in the back, unless the alignment rack is off by a little bit). Probably too small of a difference to really matter (assuming your alignment tech didn't mention it, you might ask if it's worth worrying about), and might be too small to really adjust out since it wouldn't take much to put you just as far off in the opposite direction.

Can't imagine the back end would make much difference to handling in a truck for the same reason, it's a solid axle that doesn't normally vary or change much. Bigger tires would be heavier and will decrease the modal frequency of the rear suspension which could change your feel a bit until you get used to the new setup. The increased body roll is probably unavoidable since you've moved the C.G. of the vehicle several inches higher up and possibly softened the front springs some at the same time (assuming a lift setup is designed to run over bumpier surfaces, harder springs would mean a harder ride); most cars that corner on rails will also hit their bump stops when crossing them...

 

Possible caster.I'd take it back.

 

good info! So should camber be at .0 in the rear as well?

 

Sort of, it'll help stability in that when you hit a bump the wheel will stay stay steadier...you'll get less feedback through the wheel. The wheel will self-center a bit better. It'll make the truck easier to control at high speed. If you've got the upper control arms you should bring that up to the 2.5 or better. I think people often think with the Tacomas that raking the caster back is the thing to do, and it's only part of the picture.

Toe and camber factor in a lot more into how the truck actually handles. The more positive camber you have the more the tire wants to fold to the inside of the truck when you corner, it'll feel like the front end wants to push. I would also set this to 0, or even a bit negative as I have.

 

You can't change the rear camber or toe without bending the axle. You can change the thrust by loosening everything up a bit, shoving it around and tightening it back up. It'd be interesting to see what Toyota's spec is for this number, I bet .09 is within spec.

 

Just go back to your alignment shop and specify you want 0/0/3.0. If you allow them to set you into the stock ranges, it's not optimal. Specify it and hold them to it. If they can't get 3.0, then tell them to set toe and camber at 0 and give you as much caster as they can.

 

on top of what everyone said, yes bigger tires will feel different when turning the steering wheel

 

the axle might have a little bit of negative camber built in to make the back end more stable (in an engineering sense) during cornering, and as smd3 said, it can't be adjusted anyway. Since your readings on that are symmetric I wouldn't worry about it.

smd is correct that the toe can't really be adjusted either, but rotating the axle a tiny bit could read as "toe" angle to an alignment rack that's reading tiny fractions of degrees. Just to be clear, the tiny bit of misalignment you may have is probably not worth worrying about since it would appear to involve such a small shift off from square that the u-bolt connection between the springs and axle could be shifted that far just in the course of torquing the nuts down and is almost certainly within nominal tolerance for a car assembly (I work in aerospace and have encountered two issues in the last three weeks where a difference of 1/50th of an inch ended up rendering a particular design unusable, so my calibration is a bit sensitive for the real world...).