LCA Question

I'm all aligned, truck drives great... and now I have developed a 'thunk'. happens when making a sharp turn forwards or reverse. I've narrowed it down to the front passenger side but can't figure out what the hell is causing the noise. LCA bolts are tight, cab mount is tight, any nuts/bolts that I touched during the bushing install was tightened down and confirmed that it stayed tight. Any ideas/suggestions?

Regardless, it's going back to Toyota this Saturday since it didn't start making the noise until they aligned it.

 

hate to say it but when mine first started it was the lca bushings......
jack it up and try n wiggle the lca with a large screwdriver....
who knows what or how toyo does there alingments....
i realy dont thik many toyo dealerships even know how to work on trucks

 

You mean jamb a screwdriver between the LCA and the frame and see if it'll move? I jacked it up and pushed/pulled by hand (tried shaking the hell out of the wheel to see if it'd make a noise or had any sort of play where the LCA bolted to the frame). I'll try your method with a screwdriver and see if anything moves.

 

You can keep the popcorn on this one... I'm going for something stronger

 

YEA MAN IT DEF SOMETHING UP FRONT RIGHT
so just pop the upper bj check out all top end / bushings ect....
then do same with nottom or vise versa....
shouldnt take long and recheck torq on all as your doing it.....
piece of mind



g/l

 

My guess is they didn't torque the cam bolts down and they are bouncing around from side to side.

From memory I think that bolt is 110'#

Good luck man. I was chasing down clunks for a long time. After rebuilding just about everything besides inner tie rods I'm all good to go. Hows your ball joints? You check them when you had the LCA out?

I never mentioned before, but when you have the tie rods and BJ's unbolted its a perfect opportunity to flush out the old grease and put some new grease in them even if they aren't serviceable because you have access to the bottom of the boot. I flushed out all my brand new grease in my new BJ's and TR's and replaced it with Mobil-1 before installing them. It's messy and a PITA, but worth doing if your anal like me.

 

I probably should have regreased the ball joints when I had them out but I didn't. I did check them all before undertaking the bushing replacement though. They all seemed great with no play at all. If they had been bad, I probably would have just bought the whole arm, bushings, BJ's and all. checked the LCA bolts with a wrench, I'll check them tonight with a torque wrench tonight and get the truck in an open lot with a volunteer driver so I can get under the truck while they turn the wheels back and forth. It got dark last night and although I didn't see anything moving, I won't swear to it. I'll try one more round of diagnosing tonight and take it to the stealership on Saturday if I can't find the problem.

 

Huh? You went through all this just to stiffen the suspension? You could have done that by simply adding stiffer shocks. I have the same model truck as you and I know the SR5 is a spongy nightmare. The damn thing was messing up my neck because it was so bouncy. I stiffened mine up nicely with about $200.

 

The shocks don't support weight so you can't beef up the suspension simply by adding shocks. You can make it ride better and make it less bouncy, but I wanted to support more weight comfortably so I went with 620# springs up front (probably overkill) and a TSB leaf pack and an AAL for the rear.

 

LMAO

Read

then think

then type

 

OK. That makes sense.
XXXX, you need a third option for your start an argument sig. 3) Be an asshole.

 

English....

try to learn it

You also need some math lessons

1

2

then 3

Can't just jump to 3 without 1 & 2.

 

I guess it all depends on the application. I found that I did not need help with too much weight. The Taco could carry my loads fine but would get into trouble with bottoming on bumps like RR crossings. I elected to go with adjustable rear shocks and it did eliminate the bottoming problem.

 

who makes adjustable rear shocks for Tacomas ?

 

this should be good

 

Rancho. 9 way adjustable. I can dial in exactly what I need.

This is what I have had for about 5 years now: http://www.gorancho.com/shocks.php?shock=RS9000XL

 

Your rear leaves carry the weight not the shock.

This 'adjustment' will only help on the buffering of bumps. Adjusting them as firm as they will go doesn't mean you can carry more weight. Just change the way the truck reacts when it hits them.

 

Interesting , never heard of them

 

Those shocks look to have a compression adjustment built in, very similar to what I have on my motorcycle shocks. That dial controls how quickly the shocks compress when you hit a bump, they will not help you support an additional load since they don't make the leaf pack any stronger.