UCA grinding noise, happens intermittently

Yo 1st Gen peeps,

My neighbor came over cause they see me working on my rig quite often

She has a 2001 DC 3.4L with like 240K, said that she took her truck to Toyota because there was a weird noise that the tech's found was the Drivers UCA. they told her they re-torqued and it should be good to go, also told her for a truck of that mileage she should expect weird noises noise came back a couple days later..

I looked at the UCA, everything looked ok as far as bushings not rotting out or a ton of rust, also looked like the bolts hadn't been touched at all, fuckin tech assholes

What surprised me, and I guess this is my question... was that the UCA seem to be pushed way up towards the wheel well I asked her how many miles on the coils/shocks and she said she bought the truck new and never though they'd been replaced

So, I'm thinking that the shocks/coils are so fucked that its causing the front end to droop too much, causing the UCA to be binding somehow, thus the noise

Am I way off here?

 

How much would you guesstimate the UCA is pushed up from parallel? Or from flat?

 

This ^^... that was the only thing that really caught my eye , it looked like quite a bit, hard to say in real measurements though. I guess the best thing to do is snap a pic, i'll do that after work

 

Yeah, if it's that much, unless your used to seeing them angled above parallel if you have a lift, then must be some tired coils. If she doesn't care much about the ride or anything, I believe some aftermarket company makes a pre-assembled strut for them. Might be an easy way to make a buck for ya.