Axle, wheel, tire, and alignment questions! Please help!

I just bought a 2009 tacoma double cab long bed. it has what looks like a 1 inch lift and 285/70r17s. The rear tires stick out alot further than the front tires. Is this normal? one front tire is slanted and the other is straight. The caster cam bolt isnt in the 2 tabs either on the slated side. What should i do?

 

Also tires rub on ucas quite a bit. What should i do to fix all this?

 

That 1" spacer lift that you are seeing is actually a 2" lift, there is a 2:1 ratio in the front end.

No, the rear tires should not stick out that much further than the front, did you take a wheel off to see if the previous owner had a wheel spacer on there ?

You definitely need an alignment, if a cam is outside the tabs then the cam has flattened the cam tab. This happens from hard hits off roading or even from a dumb alignment tech hulking the cam and flattening the tab. The tab can be bent back up and a good idea is to have someone run a weld bead behind all of the tabs to add strength to them and prevent that from happening again. Next option is to buy Total Chaos cam tab gussets which completely replace the OE cam tabs.

If your tires rub the UCA's the only way to fix that is either a set of wheel spacers or buy the correct back spacing wheels. It really sounds like with your rear wheels sticking out further than the front and your front tires rubbing that the previous owner had spacers on front and rear and pullled off the front spacers for some reason.

 

The tab isnt flattened but the cam is on top of the tab. Is taking the wheels off the only way to tell if there are spacers?

 

I just looked for the spacers. I dont know if the rear brakes are drums but if they are then there is 2 inch spacers on the rear wheels and none on the front ones.

 

Then that is an even worse scenario and you need to fix it immediately.

 

it really sounds like someone had a lot more stuff on that truck, probably a long travel kit in the front and stripped it all off before selling it. Generally with a long travel kit that is 2-3.5" wider in the front you run a 2" spacer in the rear to even out the track width a bit. You've got a lot of stuff to fix buddy...

 

Dang so as far as fixing stuff what else besides removing the spacers and getting an alignment done?

 

The only thing i see that isnt right is that one cam. Everything else looks right and stock as far as i can tell.

 

Sounds like the backspacing on your wheels is not right for a stock set up too and an alignment is not going to fix that so you have to figure out if your are going to add spacers to the front so your tires don't rub your UCA's or get new wheels.

 

Yeah im gonna just take the spacers off the rear and run these wheels and tires for a short time until i get some new ones that are setup properly. I have a warranty that will cover an alignment but will this setup work for me? 285/70r17 on 17x9 with 4.5bs? Eventually i will put a good 3 inch coilover lift on but thats down the road a little ways.

 

The tires only rub the ucas right at full lock so ill just try my best to avoid sharp turns for now but new wheels and tires are most deffinatly coming soon. I know ill need another alignment with the new ones but its free and that bolt worries me.