Bent axle housing? Alignment issues?

Update 1: jacked up the rear of the truck and loosened all u-bolts in a quick attempt to straighten the rear axle and zero my thrust angle. Will take new wheelbase measurements when I get home tonight.

Hello all, I know you are fans of details and pictures so this might be a long one.

Background information: I bought my 2015 TRDOR DCSB 32K miles in January and it has 1" blocks in the rear, 1.25" top-hats in the front. Now has 37K miles and bald tires. All of this I want to replace with Billy 6112/5160s, Dakars, and icon delta-joint UCAs, but if my axle housing is bent, I'd rather swap it all at once. Maybe swapping all this will solve the issue anyways?

After noticing excessive tire wear (4k miles over 7 months and my rear tires, toyo open country extremes 285/65R18, are shot), I took my truck back to a different Firestone location, and the manager looked at my numbers for about 15 seconds before saying "bent axle or the passenger rear drifted into a curb". Neither of which I have done, and the title is clean with no accidents, not to say previous 2 owners didn't hit a curb. Then took it to a suspension shop to see what they thought of it, and they put it on their alignment rack and got very similar numbers and said "I could do more measurements, but I already know its a bent axle" I started doing some investigating and found a few interesting things but was hoping I could get yalls advice. Bent axle? Will doing the suspension swap I want to do remedy the situation? Do I need to put on a new spring perch on passenger side? I have read military wraps go towards the front. But in my rough measurements, then that makes the longer arm of the spring pack also go to the front which is counter to what I have read.

I did notice the drivers side block contact surfaces are rusty and have indications of rubbing, even though there is no damage or wallowing on that side. When I loosened the U-bolts on driver (unaffected) side, they were VERY easy to break free, talking maybe 20 ft-lbs if I had to guess .

Passenger Wheelbase: 129 5/8"
Driver Wheelbase: 129"
Passenger rear tire to back fender well: 1.5"
Passenger rear tire to front fender well: 3 5/8"
Driver rear tire to back fender well: 2"
Driver rear tire to front fender well: 2 7/8"

Driver spring perch hole: fine
Driver block hole: fine
Driver spring pin: fine
Driver E-brake line: minor slack between spring bracket and hub
Driver Leaf orientation: Military wrap (half wrap) to the front
Driver rear shackle orientation: Bolts are vertical

Passenger spring perch hole: wallowed 1/8" towards the front
Passenger Block hole: wallowed 1/8" towards the front
Passenger spring pin: Paint rubbed off on the front portion of it.
Passenger E-brake line: stretched tight between spring bracket and hub
Passenger leaf orientation: Military wrap (half wrap) to the front
Passenger rear shackle orientation: bolts are vertical
Passenger side total pin misalignment due to wallowing: 1/4"

Both rear leafs are 3+1 with the 6 clips, and both lay flat with no load in the bed, and no aftermarket additions.

Key Alignment specs of note:
Right rear camber: -1.2
Right rear toe: -1.65
Left Rear camber -0.5
Left rear toe: 0.32
Total rear toe: -1.32
Thrust angle: 0.98

Lastly, when inspecting the axle housing itself, I noticed 2 things:
1) minor paint cracking ONLY on the passenger side at some assembly welds.
2)Appearance of oily residue around the entirety of my rear diff cover

Picture dump describing the above, in order:

First alignment from March at Firestone:


Second opinion. No alignment done, just took measurements 4k miles later at a suspension shop:


Driver (unaffected side) tire wear:


Passenger (affected side) tire wear:


Passenger rear tire to rear fender well:


Passenger rear tire to front fenderwell:


Driver rear tire to front fenderwell:


Driver rear tire to rear fenderwell:


Driver Spring Perch:


Driver rear block hole:


Passenger side spring perch:


Passenger Block Hole:


Passenger Spring Pin:


Axle Paint cracking from front:


Axle Paint Cracking from rear:


Oily diff Passenger:


Oily diff driver:



Hoping yall can provide some insight moving forward. Chop and swap the passenger perch? Replace the axle housing? further tests or measurements yall need? Long story short, I cant burn through a set of tires every 4000 miles. What I don't understand is if it was a bent axle on passenger side, why would I burn out both rear tires instead of only the passenger side.

 

Passenger leaf pin could be sheared or at least partially sheered... that doesn't explain the camber issue tho...the acked paint at the weld doesnt look promising...might need a new housing man...sucks

 

Thanks for the input man, might be a bummer but i'm hoping there is some wisdom out there that has ideas I haven't thought of! The spring pin only has chipped paint but otherwise is whole (as pictured above), and the nut on top is secure as well. Yea, I didn't notice the cracked paint until this morning. we will see.

 

are you the original owner? bending a housing isnt that common.
i would bolt it up, but make sure you align the wheels the best you can in the opening or better yet from a known point on the frame. you will have some wiggle room when you tighten up the ubolts

 

Nah, I'm the third owner, which probably should've raised some red flags when it only had 32K miles on it at time of purchase. I'll square it up in the wheel well when I tighten it all up (keeping it loose as long as I can incase someone needs pictures or something more before I have to drive it tonight). Only issue I have with that is... is that a root cause solution, or a band-aid fix?

 

Seems to be a bent housing which will not only give you crap tire wear on both sides which you already experienced but over time will also ruin your differential (and decrease your fuel economy)

A new naked housing from Toyota costs about $1,000 and I would be careful getting one from a junkyard because the wreck could have very well bent the one you buy not to mention they likely will want to sell the whole axle assembly. Hope you got a good deal on the truck at least. Bite the bullet and move on

I’ve bent a housing in a Jeep once from being stupid and jumping it so it’s really not that hard to do...

 

Yea I'm worries about my differential, honestly, if i'm going to swap the housing, my brother mentioned Diamond sells one for $1200 which would be more future proof anyways. Ive never jumped it, shit ive only driven it 4K highway miles due to traveling for work. but I cant speak for the previous owners.


Update 1: jacked up the rear of the truck and loosened all u-bolts in a quick attempt to straighten the rear axle and zero my thrust angle. Will take new wheelbase measurements when I get home tonight.

 

New wheelbase numbers.

Passenger: 129.25"
Driver: 129"

 

I'd bet money that axle is bent

 

while you are playing with it, see if you have a bent flange. jack it up put sands under the axle and carfully put it in gear and watch it spin. see if you see some wobble. you can bend an axle but its not that common unless you are jumping or in a bad accident.

 

Sorry for the late reply, thanks for the idea! I will try this as I'm shopping around for an axle just in case.

 

So what was the conclusion? Facing a similar problem