well I think its about time that I finish this thread up. This project turned out to be pretty easy as long as you are not afraid to take things apart.
Parts List and Cost
All parts where ordered from Wheelers Offroad
01-04 Tacoma Steering Rack Bushing Kit (ES 8.10103G) -- $18.95
01-04 Tacoma Sway Kit (DAY MO3112, DAY M02104, DAY M03282) -- $28.00
Rev Tek Diff Drop Kit (REVRTDD1-K
-- $24.00
Parts Cost -- $70.95
Shipping -- $10.51
Total Cost -- $81.46
Estimated Cost from local shop -- $500
Step 1: The day before I was going to do the work I removed both the front and rear skid plates and hit all nuts, bolts, and studs with penetrating oil. I used Liquid Wrench but any penetrating oil will work.
Step 2: Get the truck off the ground and stable. I used a large bottle jack to get the truck off the ground. I then positioned my jack stands on the frame behind each of the front wheels. I would have preferred to put the jack stands up front but I would have needed to block them up farther than I was comfortable with so I opted for the safer route. The important thing to note here is all you really need to do is get the front wheel off the ground so that they are free to move.
Step 3: Crawl under the truck and get yourself oriented. Looking from the back forward this is what you are going to see.
Step 4: What you do at this step depends on what you have going on with your truck. If you have a Differential Drop Kit installed you will need to uninstall it and support your front differential with a bottle jack or floor jack. I had not installed my yet so this was not an issue. If you try and pull the rack out with a Differential Drop Kit installed you will not be able to get the drivers side bolt out.
Since I was doing the Rack Bushings and the Sway Bushing I decided to go ahead and pull the sway bar bushing first. I started with the drivers side. If you notice the bolt goes in from the top and through the sway bushing bracket that has a nut welded to it. I had not problem loosening the bolts. I completely loosed both sides. (the passenger side does not have as much room to work because of the muffler but it really wasn't hard.
Important: Make sure that you mark the orientation and what side each bracket came off of. It is possible to put the brackets on upside down, which will twist the sway bar bushing once you torque them down. I used a paint pen to do this. Once the brackets holding up the sway bar bushing have been removed the sway bar will flop down and bit but it is still connected to the wheel. The bushings come off with ease as they are split bushings. If you have a Tacoma that is 05 and later you will have additional bushings at the wheel (I am not going to cover this). At this point I left the sway bar loose and move on to the Rack. I figured having the sway bar loose would give me more room to work.
Step 5: I had read several posts at other web sites about replacing the rack bushings and the major way they differed was weather you have to disconnect the rack from the wheels. After talking to a few people it seems that it was not necessary to disconnect the rack from the wheels. I started by loosening the drivers side and passenger side mounts. The passenger side mount has an interesting configuration. The top has a stud welded to the cross member (you remove the nut) and the bottom has nut welded to the cross member (your remove the bolt). The drivers side mount is a through bolt. I was not able to get any of these nuts/bolts loose from under the truck. I got out the breaker/cheater bar and had to break them loose from either side of the truck using my foot.
The central bolt (mounted from the top down through the cross member was a real pain in the $ss. there is very little room to work on top of the cross member and I eventually had to get my driver up there and hit it with a small sledge to break it loose.
Once I had all the nuts/bolts/studs loose I used some straps and bungee cords to help hold the rack up....I attached the straps to the upper control arms.
The passenger side rack bushing is a split bushing held on with a bracket and comes off real easy. Remove this bracket and the central mount bolt. To remove the driver side through bolt I used a punch and sledge. This took more effort than I expected...more on why later.
Step 6: Once you have everything removed its time to get the rack off of its mounting shelf. I started by grabbing the passenger side wheel and working it back and forth until on got the rack off of the passenger side stud. Then I moved on to the drivers side wheel moving it back and forth until finally the rack moved back and came off the shelf that it was sitting on. While this was not hard you are basically just horsing things around until you can get it to drop. Keep you mouth closed and make sure you have eye protection because all types of $hit will start falling down on you.
Step 7: Once you have the rack off of the cross member its time to get the bushings and sleeves out. The passenger side bushing is a split bushing and is pulled with no problem. The central bushing and the drivers side bushing take some create thinking to remove. I ended up using C clamps, washers and large deep well sockets to push the bushings and sleeves out. The general procedure is as follows (sorry I didn't take any pics of this). Get a C-clamp (call XP MARC if you want to use German C-Clamps...I hear that they perform some structural duties on the XP
) that is roughly twice as wide as the rack. On the movable end of the C-Clamp get a washer that is about the same size as the bushing you are trying to push out. On the fixed end of the C-Clamp you are going to need a deep well socket or short piece of pipe that is larger than the bushing you are going to push out. Once you are set up all you do is turn down the C-Clamp pushing the bushing into your deep well socket or piece of pipe. That was easy right
Step 8: Finally everything is removed....I thoroughly cleaned everything. There was quite a bit of old bushing attached to various parts. Once everything was cleaned I applied Lithium lubricate to all the bushing parts. This should help them seat well and keep them from squeaking. While cleaning parts I noticed that my drivers side rack through bolt was slightly bent
. I was blown away by this and now I new why it was a bit hard to get out and why I was having toe issues. Well it was Saturday so what the hell was I going to do. This is a grade 10 bolt, can't get that at the hardware store, and it was fairly long. I knew I could get grade 8 at the hardware store but I was just a bit nervous considering this holds on your steering rack. So I decided to bring a couple of beers over to my neighbor who I happen to know has a huge press. I convinced him to straighten the bolt for me
. So I am sure you are asking " how the hell did you bend your rack bolt?" Well several years ago I was out cutting firewood and on my way home I encountered a quad hauling ass around a corner on the wrong side of the road. I served left to avoid the head on and plastered the inboard ditch. Long story short the guy on the quad survived with only a bruised ego and my drivers side front end to fixed. He is pretty lucky I was paying attention and that by the time the LEO got there he had sobered up a bit. It ended up being an insurance job that replaced a variety of components on my left front but evidently they never bothered to check the rack. Damm insurance work.
Step 9: Well after getting the Drivers side through bolt straightened out it was time to get the new bushings in. I used the same technique to install the new bushings (drivers side and central) as I did removing them except that intead of using a socket or small piece of pipe on one side I just used a piece of bar stock to provide a mount for the fixed side of the C-Clamp. The new bushings pushed in real easy....you just have to be careful to not damage the new bushings. The passenger side bushing is easy to get on as it is a split bushing.
Step 10: Once all the bushing were installed its time to get the rack back up on the cross member. I used the same process as removing it. I wiggled the wheels back and forth until I got the rack back up on the mounting shelf on the cross member. Once you have the rack back up on the cross member you start my loosely installing the passenger side bushing. Once you have the passenger side bushing loosely fitted it time to get the drivers side through bolt in. In order to get it lined up you have to torque the rack and wheels around a bit until you are able to push the through bolt in (remember to install the new washer between the rack and the cross member). Make sure that you don't strip the threads when pushing or tapping the bolt through. Once the passenger side and drivers side are loosely installed I removed the the straps holding the rack and began tightening each side until the central rack mount was lined up. Install the central bolt and then torque everything to spec (Passenger and Central Mount 123 ft lbs, Drivers side 141 ft lbs).
http://www.wanderthewest.com/forum/index.php?/gallery/image/7571-rack-drivers-side-new/
Now wasn't that easy
Step 11: Time to get the sway bar installed with the new bushings. After doing the rack bushings this will be self explanatory. Each of the bushing is a split bushing and goes on easy. Make sure you install the brackets with the correct orientation. Torque the sway bar bolts down. I could not find a specification for these so I just used 90 ft lbs. When you do this step try and get the sway bar back as close as possible to its original position...you can slide it side to side.
Step 12: Differential Drop Kit. This is the easy work that I have ever done on my truck. You need a bottle jack or floor jack to support your differential. Remove the two bolts that hold the differential up. Lower the differential enough so that you can insert the spacers then slide in the bolts and tighten. I torqued these to 140 ft lbs. This whole process took about ten minutes.
Step 13: Go around and make one last check to make sure you got everything back together and that everything is torqued. Get the truck back down on the ground and take it for a drive. As you drive you will here a few pops and knocks as things settle and adjust.....this is totally normal. Once I got back to the house I rechecked all the bolts and re-torqued them.
Notes: Depending on the year of your Tacoma you will not use all the parts in the Wheelers Sway Kit. I also did not discuss changing the bump stops. This is self explanatory and optional.
I noticed the difference in the truck right away. The steering wheel had much more feedback and the bit of drift I had been noticing on the highway was completely gone. I also feel like the new sway bar bushings eliminated quite a bit of sway but that could be in my head because it didn't have much sway to begin with.
It took several days for the sway bushings to settle in but they finally did.
I took the truck in to have it aligned because I straightened our the drivers side rack through bolt (this will affect your toe). It turns out that my toe was off by 3 degrees
This work was very straight forward and easy to accomplish. I would recommend this maintenance or mod to just about anyone.
Hope this helps someone out there,
Cort
