Offroad-Express

was jst down mucking round in the truck and lost steering. very happy i was off road and not doing 100km on road. i have a 91 4runner and have just done a body lift. noticed a bit on noise in steering bout a week ago and saw that the rubber bit where the steering shaft goes through the firewall had broken and thought that was the noise. now a linkage behind the steering wheel has broken (right up in steering column). have left it over night and have to go fix tomorro. what am i looking at? will this be a quick fix ie. has the shaft sliped out due to body lift or will i need a new part. help please.

cheers Pete

does steering wheel just keep turning ??????if its slipped out there'll be o bolt in the drivers foot well if its broken just need a new bit from scrappers

yep it sure does. will pull apart properly 2moro. just got it home on tow truck, didnt want to risk leaving it were it was to find it striped in the morning. gr8 tow company auto rescue, in invercargill and chch. gr8 service and a good price. first time its been in the driveway with mud stil in the lugs on the tyres!

Hey Pete

I had something simialr to that happen on my hilux after a 2" body lift,

Is your steering column adjustable? Because what happend on mine is i didnt loosing the uj's off enough and the shaft wore out a nylon bush on the end of the steering column, which holds the steering shaft into the column itself. Without the nylon bush holding the shaft in, it slips out of where it is adjustable as there isnt a uj insde the steering column.

Hope this helps

not to sure yet will c wot its like when i get it apart. would assume that the lift may not have been at fault as the guy that helped me had done quite afew lifts with no problems. cheers for the advice tho.

u boat sounds on the case .........

and petemcc for future ref get youre self a spare shaft (rubber yoke end)
and never go anywhere without mine and if youre running huge tyres think of the stress..........

hope you sort it mate

Keep a bunch of heavy duty cable ties in your truck toolbox. They work pretty good as a temp fix for the steering flexi joint. also you'd be amazed at wwat else you can fix with a cable tie.

Hey Pete how ya getting on with that steering problem? Hope it was a simple problem and you got it fixed no worries. Hows the surf been peforming since you did the body lift and chucked the big tyres on? Much better offroad? Im putting a post on about that exhaust mod i did with mine to ask a couple of questions so have a read and it will tell you all about it if your interested.

well got it fixed, new steering column. there is a joint right up behind the steering wheel that is made to collaps in an accadent. what i think happened is that it had been in a small crash that weakend the joint the the body lift stressed it till it poped. however when i went to put the new column in the shaft was to short by about 10mm even at full extension (exactly the same part so must have been under alot of tension b4) so i had to space it at the rubber joint, will be getting a thicker joint when i get home. my advice to anybody doing a body lift is to undo the adjustable joint jst inside the cabin and one at the universals in the engine bay. do the lift then do up the adjustable joint till its loose but wont fall out and try do the other one back up. if it doesnt fit fix it then. stuff like this wont be picked up in a cert. this could have been very dangerous if i had been goind fast.

penetrator, truck is going well with lift, but new shocks in also and it almost handels better than it did standard. very happy, havnt had it offroad much but seems to go well. crawled up a hill my old standard ln61 took 5 atempts at lol.