Tie rod concern

My '98 Tacoma has been showing a strong steering wheel vibration at 60+ mph on some stretches of road. Not all, I can go 80 smoothly on other stretches. So I was blaming the New Mexico roads, but taking the tires off, we see the rack boot on the driver side is deformed, and there is some nice shiny wear on the frame from the tire hitting it. This looks really bad, especially considering the tie rods were replaced five years ago - they are the newest thing on this truck. Still running on original TRD-package shocks and struts, just FYI. Anyone seen this before or have an idea what's going on here? Much appreciated.

 

Usually steering rack bushings are a cause to many of these problems.

While on the ground, watch the rack while someone moves the steering wheel side to side and you will likely see movement.

Are you running stock tires and rims?

 

Hi guys, thanks for chiming in. I had it looked at by my awesome new Toyo specialist and apparently when the tie rods were replaced 6 years ago by someone else, the plastic housing just did not get molded correctly - supposedly no other issues with it. I had the shocks and struts replaced, since they were the originals, seemed like it might be time after 290K , and a lot of handling issues went away, including the steering vibration.

This truck came "stock" with all the bells and whistles, including 31.5 tires, which were an option that year. But I seem to always get comments about oversized tires, and when I see other models around, the tires look almost comically small compared to mine. So perhaps they are "stock oversized."

I do have to make an extreme left hand turn to get into my garage, so I'm assuming that's how I managed to wear the frame that way, trying to be more careful about that. I'll look into the steering limiting bolt possibility, thanks for that thought.

Thank you both for the replies.