Is carrier bearing cross member structural?

06 2WD Prerunner double cab 5’ bed.

I had a custom one piece driveshaft made to replace the two piece and make the carrier bearing obsolete. This fixed a lot of vibrations I was having on deceleration. Problem is, now on very large bumps or lesser bumps with weight in the truck, the cross member that the carrier bearing was attached to makes contact with the driveshaft due to it being too close to the cross member. Is this something I can safely remove? I don’t haul a lot of weight in the truck bed so if it’s optional, I’d like to remove it as I’ve found that it’s pretty easy to remove, thank you!

I’d rather not go back to a two piece shaft because it runs so much smoother now and doesn’t have a carrier bearing that would fail again like the prior did….

picture from another truck online but, pretty much the same:

 

A carrier bearing is a carrier bearing.

a crossmember is a crossmember.
Would I delete a crossmember? No.

there are aftermarket and custom ones people put for different reasons.

 

I would say yes, maybe not as far as load carrying ability but certainly for crash-worthiness

 

How bad is the rear squatted? I feel like any stock height truck would never have this issue.

 

You should have made the driveshaft smaller diameter.

 

Travel was designed with the carrier bearing and cross member able to hinge the drive shaft at that point. Rather than eliminating the cross member I'd look into ways to boost the rear end back up when loaded. Either fixed or adjustable, whichever fits your needs best. I like bags but I might look into Road Active Suspension also for adjustable or anything from Sumo springs to an add-a-leaf to a new set of leaf packs if going fixed. Squat sucks.

 

Friday?

 

I'm confused how a one-piece driveshaft could possibly come into contact with a cross-member designed to clear and support a two-piece driveshaft. Is the truck lowered?

 

This is an intuitive question.

Mine is lowered, and I had that exact issue. In my case, which could be relative here, I cut out the hoop, then with box tubing, made the support on the under side. To retain the strength of that cross-member.

 

Here is an older photo.

 

Front piece of the OEM two-piece driveshaft is ~half the diameter of the rear piece. OP probably got the one-piece driveshaft made to the full diameter through its full length.

 

I will add a photo of my truck shortly but I do not believe it is squatted or lowered in any way, it is the stock pre-runner height as far as I know. My driveshaft does have a pretty larger diameter like the one on Torspd's truck above, which the driveshaft shop recommended since it has a very long driveshaft due to being 2wd and reaching all the way from the transmission to the rear differential. If there are options to keep the bed from dropping on it, I will look into those as well, that's not something I have done so I'll certainly take recommendations!

 

Betting they built a 4” driveshaft.

 

Yes that is why Toyota used a two-piece driveshaft - for critical speed considerations. Either rework the crossmember like Torspd, or get a driveshaft built with smaller OD over the first 1/3 length, with thicker wall.

 

Structural engineer here - yes, that member is structural. I wouldn’t remove it

At a glance, looks like it’s serving as a brace to resist lateral torsional buckling of the C-channels during flexure of the frame. Also helps to support the cab (obviously)

Toyota put it there for a reason. If it wasn’t needed they wouldn’t have spent the money to fabricate and install the braces during manufacturing of the truck.