I have a '96 T4R that I bought a few months ago and my 16 year old son has been driving. It pulled a little to the right but when you hold the steering wheel straight, it drove straight. It has a lift and beater mud tires that were wearing badly on the outside so I took it to TireDiscounters for an alignment. They said it needed a bunch of stuff in the front end but they did what they could. It drove straightish but the steering wheel was now literally 30 degrees off. I waited to take it back. I changed the struts and put on new upper control arms that claim to be good for 2-4" lift
TIre discounters has a free alignment for a year so I took it back and explained the history. They said no problem. I picked it up that afternoon. Front tires still look like they are out at the top and now the wheel is about 5 degrees the opposite side when driving straight. On the way home the horn started honking randomly, in traffic. Didn't matter if I hit the center, pulled in the center, I was the center of attention. Got home and unplugged the horns for a few days til I could take a look. I assumed the tech had removed the steering wheel to help with alignment which I don't think is the correct way Vs messing with tierods. Anyway I chose to pull the airbag and look, assuming it was a simple pinched wire or jammed spring or something. Took me about 2 hrs to solve and I believe it is fixed but am curious about what y'all think is the root cause.

The horn is a pretty simple design where the ground is switched and pushing on the air bag closes the circuit where ground comes from the steering column and back through the single wire when contact is made. There are 4 potential contact points all with a copper pad on wheel side and copper rivet on airbag side. The airbag is isolated by rubber bushings holding springs away from the 4 screws it slides on.


The airbag module has 4 plastic pins that fit into holes in the isolated brackets to make it easy to align and then there is a torx screw at 3 and 9 o clock positions to attach the airbag. I thought the plastic pins must not be aligned and the bracket is compressing the spring. I lined it up, pins went in fine, tightened up and as soon as I put the battery terminal on it started honking. I thought it might have something to do with the screws so I left them out, still the same. Maybe the air bag housing is getting grounded through the 2 wires coming to the airbag so I tested it with the airbag unplugged, still super sensitive. Maybe it is the clock spring. Tested it with no air bag in the wheel and no problems. No amount of vibrations could make it honk. I had to push the brackets 1/4" before the horn honks. Maybe the rubber isolaters have gone bad, nope. I took the brackets off and inspected them against the airbag module. The lower copper pads were very close to the housing. I took my grinder and gave 1/8" clearance.


The horn would still honk with the slightest vibration or if u looked at it wrong.

So at this point I stopped with the assumption that there was anything connected to the alignment. I looked closely at the copper contact points. While there was certainly a mark on all 4 where the pins had been or would normally make contact, none of them came anywhere close to hitting that spot now. And the bracket ends looked like they had been bent out. Maybe the previous owner had road rage and pushed really hard on the horn?



So I took some needle nose pliers and bent them back to line up properly with the copper rivets and whylah, horn sounds only when u push it in 1/4".




Has anyone heard of / experienced this where pushing too hard on the horn could bend the brackets to the point where they contact the airbag housing?

I then crawled under the truck to see if I could find evidence they had done anything at the rack / tie rods. There is clear evidence they had wrenches on the tie rods but they left the clamps off both sides of the rack. Grrrr.


Also, I had the truck on my own 2 post lift and had just changed the strut. The axle boot was fine at the time but now, just a few days later the boot is ripped and grease has slung out. It is an old rig and it could be coincidental hut timing is highly suspect.

This is why I have a hard time paying anyone to work on my rigs. I don't do exhaust or alignments but everything else I'm too cheap to pay for and usually do myself.

 

It's not really all that uncommon to have an old CV boot give up shortly after putting a lift on it. Did you do a diff drop with that 2 - 4 inch lift?

 

Actually it had a lift when I got the truck but the shocks / struts were old and it drives like a basketball. I replaced the front struts and reused the spacers. However, the off-road shop I talked to said "Toyotas hate being lifted and you need upper control arms designed for a lift or else the camber will be way off.". That is why I changed the upper control arms. They came with new ball joints. I haven't seen evidence that the lower ball joints are bad but thethe bushings in the lower control arms where camber is adjusted look like they may have some space / gap.

 

I'm not a suspension guy by any stretch. Heck, I'm a radar Tech by trade. I've just owned a couple of Toyotas for a long time now. Since 88, actually. I still have the 87 Hilux I bought in 88. Still runs like a top, too.

Anywho, from what I understand, all the vehicle's weight rests on the lower ball joints, and thus, the lower control arms. If there's ANY doubt of any kind about them, replace them. New, OEM parts ONLY, unless you need a speciality item due to the lift, to be able to do the alignment. I understand, don't know from personal experience, but I seem to recall reading on this forum someplace, that LCE makes very high quality parts for this kind of thing. I may be wrong on that, though.
In any event, definitely replace the LCA's if they're even the slightest bit questionable. It's a small price to pay to keep the front wheels attached to the truck while you're on the freeway, or out on the trail.

Good luck to you!
Pat☺

 

I'll second Pat. If you frequent any of the Toyota forums, or do a google search, you'll see too many horror stories of lower ball joints separating and the wheel coming off. For most of us, it doesn't matter how they look or how much play they have. We replace them about every 100,000 miles, no questions asked, with OEM parts. My uppers are original (98 Tacoma w/300,000 miles), and are on my list to replace, but they don't get the wear the lower ones do.

There's a diagram I found posted on another forum somewhere, illustrating this problem. The first gen Tacomas (not sure what gen 4Runner) have essentially all the weight of the front end resting on the lower ball joints, trying to force them apart, while just as much weight is resting on the upper ball joints, forcing them to stay together. This was fixed when they went to the newer body style Tacoma in 05.

Found it. Tacoma World.





Anyway, you don't need to look far to find a ton of horror stories.