Help me understand the centering of the steering rack and steering wheel

I've had my Lexus GX470 for almost a year now and one thing that bugged me was that the driver side tie rod end had so many more threads exposed compared to the passenger side. Currently it's at 3 threads on the passenger vs 10 threads on the driver side. I do my own alignments at home on this vehicle as well as the Tacoma and have verified my measurements against the ones taken at the alignment shop and they were very close.

I'm thinking that the steering rack isn't centered so I do some research and I jack up the vehicle, unbolt the tie rod ends from the knuckle and turn the steering wheel left and right, making sure that it's even. Well it turns out that the steering wheel turned just a tad more to the right than it did to the left. I remove the airbag and steering wheel and clock it one tooth to the left. I test it out and both directions now turn just past 1.5 rotations.

I bolt the tie rod ends back on and go for a test drive. Vehicle still drives straight, but now the steering wheel is way off center to the left, I expected this. I pull back into the garage to re adjust the toe and well I'm back at square one again because after making the necessary adjustments I'm further adding more threads to the driver side tie rod end and reducing the amount on the passenger side.

The only thing I see that could have messed with the steering wheel alignment is that four years ago during previous ownership the entire dash was replaced by the dealer for dash cracking issues and the steering wheel had to be removed to do that.

Is this even an issue or more of my OCD?

 

This is OCD my dude.

Like it sounds your already doing you could adjust the tierods to be equal lengths of thread showing then take the steering wheel off and reinstall it centered, you'd later need to hold the steering wheel straight and adjust the tierods slightly to get toe correct.

Personally way to much damn work, long as it drives straight and nothings bent I wouldnt worry about it.

 

It's off, ideally you want to remove the steering column from the rack and rotate it to true center. But there's nothing wrong with removing the steering wheel and rotating it.

The VSC is set for the steering angle sensor to read 0, it doesn't matter as long as the L is straight up and down.

I'd set the 1.5 (It's usually 1.75 for Toyotas, so I do 1.5 and a bit for center) Set the toe roughly, drive it true, then bolt the column, or in this case, the wheel. Then complete alignment.

 

I would just like to understand it more. I have never seen on any of my vehicles this much difference in threads between the two tie rods and the passenger side is almost bottomed out. I think me worrying about the clock spring horror stories is throwing me off. With the airbag removed the clock spring isn't even in the picture, correct?

Explain to me this adjustment? I'm not getting it what's the L and 1.5 for the steering wheel?

Thanks

 

L is the lexus emblem, I mean a centered steering wheel.

The 1.5 is the turns to center. I usually find its 1.5 and a bit.

 

Ok here's my understanding on what to do:

Unbolt steering rack from column (or steering wheel from column), set the steering rack to center of travel, adjust tie rods roughly to even and pointing straight ahead, bolt steering rack to column (or steering wheel onto column and centered), complete alignment.

 

how would you know if the rack is centered
some vehicles have a bolt hole in the rack for that, with a centering screw tool, that goes into a divot that is cut from factory into the inside of the rack. For the "centered position"

another way is to take the rack out of the vehicle and turn it all the way left or right (supposedly) while counting the number of turns, turning it on the splined shaft with piers, to find a center position. Which will be hard to keep when putting it back into the truck because it will want to move.
and is a lot of labor

it's also hard to tell if unbolting the tie rod ends, to push the rack by hand and watch visually when the tie rod boots expand/compress trying to use that as a way to judge it,
because still, the rack is held on via spline shaft, which has high room for error if it's put on just a bit crooked

on regular cars it's basically a special cut design that kind of only goes on one way to make it fool proof
but Toyota in their infinite wisdom decided to make it a spline shaft design with full 360 adjustment just like a wiper blade