Difficulty in truck alignment

I upgraded my stock OR tires to Toyo Open Country MT in 265/75R16 and when I did it I got an alignment. After driving home I realized the truck was pulling to the right a bit so i brought it back in and was told something about the road crown causing the issue and they redid the alignment. The problem seemed to have gone away and I Honestly can't remember it say for certain the problem was entirely gone.

Now yesterday I took it in for the free service (5k miles) and they did a tire rotation. I left and found if I let go of the wheel on a straight road the wheel would turn towards the right and I'd be the next lane in just a few seconds. I took it back today at 10:30 am and they stated it'd be about an hour and half. At 12:30 I went and asked for an update and the service tech told me the guy handling it would come find me and update me. At 1:15 I still had no update and I went back up to tell them I was leaving to get lunch as I'd been there almost 3 hours.

I was finally told that they were having trouble aligning my truck. They stated they would align it and then it would come out of alignment and was told they had 2 techs working on it and we spoke. At 2:30 I received a call it was ready for pickup.

Now I drive home. I'm on a straight road, I let the steering wheel go and I drift ever so slightly into the right lane. Is this something I'm going to have to deal with? I've got to go back on Wednesday because I ordered the RAV4 mirrors and TRD PRO Shift knob so I'm gonna bring it back up to the service department.

Anyone else have any issues with the truck not driving entirely true? Any help or input would be greatly appreciated.

 

you will need to provide info, such as an alignment report, to have this discussion. otherwise there are endless possibilities...

you're on mud tires?

 

And in general, your truck is not an XRunner. As I tell my friends, my truck does not run on rails like my cars do.

 

I can take a picture of what they printed out if that's what you mean.

Mud tires yes. Only type of Off Road tires ive bought and never had issues like this before. Granted that was on a different platform.

 

We need the alignment sheet to tell what's wrong. It could be the tire is bad, and unbalancable...
Or find a new alignment shop...

 

Tires have about 3k miles and all work done by the dealer themselves.

 

Did they find the reason why it kept coming out of alignment?
Alignment sheet won't do us armchair mechanics much good if they didn't fix that. Bushings or balljoints...

What tire pressure?

 

Dat toe

 

Tire pressure was at 39 when last read

They never gave a reason on why it kept coming out of alignment.

 

Is it holding alignment now?

If it is...
I'd try lowering the pressure a bit; 35-37 psi.
When you plus size the tire like that, it basically gives you zero scrub radius, or close to it.
That combined with overinflated tires will make it more susceptible to road crown and left/right loading of the contact patch. Having MTs doesn't help either.
I'd prefer to see about .08-.10 toe-in as well.

How's the inside wear look?

 

It's not tracking entirely straight its tracking to the right a little ways. I'll bring the inflation up when I go back in they are the ones that aired them up. I'll try to bring it down a hair before I go in if I have time but I don't get to drive a lot.

I don't know anything about alignment so I don't know what the toe really means so I don't know what to expect.

 

Our trucks and all rwd vehicles have a little bit of positive scrub radius designed into them; let's assume 4mm(1/8") positive scrub.
This means there is more contact patch to the outside of SAI than there is to the inside. This pulls the tires out when driven and why toe-in is spec'd; to compensate and zero out when driven.

Having a taller tire changes where SAI intersects the contact patch, moving it inward; in your case approximately 4mm(1/8"). So now you have zero scrub radius. Zero scrub radius means, SAI is center of contact patch and any left/right loading of the contact patch will throw it in that direction. In your case, road crown is throwing it to the right. I suggested the toe-in to somewhat compensate. The correct fix would be a wheel/offset combo that moves the scrub back to the positive, 4mm. Example;16x7 et25(OEM) to a 16x7et21.

37 psi is the adjusted tire placard pressure for your new tire size. This allows max payload capacity and is not generally considered optimal. The 'overinflated' 39 psi is compounding the problem with the zero scrub radius. The contact patch is high in the center and why I suggested lowering it, to flatten it out.

 

Almost all roads have a bit of a crown. Find an empty one and drive on the wrong side. If it drifts to the left about the same as what it did on the right then you're probably good. Be careful doing this as someone may turn onto the road, and it feels weird to have it drift left.

Mine also slowly drifts to the right on a level road because of the crown. It's normal. But it should be a very slow drift. What you had originally was obviously excessive.

Edit - Or go right down the middle where the crown would be equal on both sides...

Edit2 - Roads are designed this way so they will drain. A perfectly flat road would be dangerous in the rain.

 

Find an airport and drive on the runway. Tell us your local TV news channel to watch.
Joke aside, find an empty road and drive in the middle.

 

I could probably find an airport around me lol won't be a TSA guarded one lol

I'm gonna do as @splitbolt stated and air down to 37 after driving a bit and see what that does. Even with Road crown isn't the point of the alignment to help account for this?

I just drove a new Grand Cherokee and it tracked pretty damn straight on the same roads I've had issues on. Yes I know different vehicles and tires and everything but still I don't want to have to constantly hold the wheel left of center to just go in a straight line.

 

Yeah, somethings wrong if it's that bad. Mine drifts a bit, but it's super slow, depending on the road. The alignment does not correct for this as there is no way for the person doing the alignment to know what the crown angle may be on any given road. Then there are turns and stuff. Aligning it to anything other than straight ahead (with correct toe and camber to account for speed) will make one side or the other harder to turn, and will likely wear your tires badly. I'd probably have have the frame checked if it's just pulling with the alignment correct.

 

It's not a very sudden move it's kinda gradual but if you were to just hold the wheel straight in about 4 seconds if someone was next to you it might be close call. I don't know how to best describe it. In my mind a new vehicle should go straight if on a straight road. I shouldn't need to hold the wheel to the left. It gets tidious.

 

That's wrong. I'd get the frame checked. On I-90 I barely held the wheel at 80, just used a finger. That radar cruise control rocks (I was behind a semi, in clear weather).

 

Drop the PSI down 33-35psi. I run 34 front and 32 rear on st maxx 255s e rated tire and see if that helps.

Also you need to find out if toyota is using road force balancing and if they're not leave and find a shop that does....discount tire did my mount and balance and they did an awesome job.

If none of these help you need to let Toyo know that your tires are out of round and cannot balance them. Round force balance should isolate which tire it is.

 

Something else I thought of after re-reading your original post concerning symptoms after rotation.

If the dealer went 'by the book', they did a straight front to rear rotation.
With those tires you should be rotating the rears straight forward and the fronts crossed to the rear.
Can you post a pic of the treads from a sideview?