5th Gen Steering Wheel Shake: SOLUTIONS ONLY

Could be rotors starting to pulse if it only happens under braking.

 

And were did you get that information, Fux News?

 

nope SL

 

I had the gray trd wheels and had no shake. I switched to the black trd wheels and now have a shake. I have had 3 sets of different brand of tires and have had them balanced 5 times with road force and still have a shake. Two brands wouldn’t balance but the falkens are all under 2. It still shakes

 

Anecdotally...

My friend had the new style TRD black wheels on his old truck (2022?). No shake.

He then moved the same set of wheels/tires to his new 2024 truck. Shake. Tried new tires. Still shake.

Don't think it's the black wheels. But it could be lol.

 

It is annoying. I am surprised after all this time no one has found a definitive solution

 

I had a steering wheel shake for a while that felt like a tire was out of balance but sort of intermittent. I went around in circles the biggest change was installing the ECGS bushing, i also cleaned all of the mating surfaces on the rims and that helped a good deal but what finally completely fixed it was an alignment at a 4x4 shop. They spent 3 hours with the truck and it drives like butter now. I couldn't believe and just never knew that a bad alignment could cause what felt like an out of balance tire. Shop said it was common to get a shake from a bad alignment. Never knew.

 

My camber is off because I have a seized lca. It is barely out of spec. Does anyone know if that can contribute to the shake?

 

I had a steering wheel shake, researched it, and the 95% solution was to have Discount Tire do a road force balance. I've not read all 9 pages of this thread so I hope this helps.

 

I ask when i can and so far it seems E load have more shake issues than SL. So that makes sense.

 

Can you post your measurements?

 

Hello! My first post here; I'm a new member. Found my solution to this dilemma. Significant shimmy/shake in my steering wheel at highway speeds. Took the vehicle to a Toyota dealer to have the wheels road force balanced. I had suspension work a few months prior, including a new alignment, so I already knew an alignment issue wasn't the case. Toyota was able to road force balance three of my four wheels, and found the other to have excessive wheel runout. That wheel was on the front of the vehicle. Swapped it to the back and tested the vehicle for about a week following. The problem was gone. In process of putting a brand new set of wheels on my vehicle now. Can't live with a faulty wheel on my awesome rig moving ahead. I'm certain the new wheels will be great, too (Method Race Wheels). The set I had, including the faulty one, was KMC. My $0.02 on solving this problem...

 

I suggest that wheel installation is often to blame, especially when ham fisted techs just zap the lug nuts with impact wrenches. Without extra care, it is very easy to install the wheels incorrectly seated at the hub. My 2018 with new KO2's drove super smooth. Then I knocked some weights off the wheels power washing mud off the bottom, and of course it shook. Four complete road force wheel balances later it was still shaking at various speeds over 60. I recently rotated the tires myself, and paid close attention to how the (hub centric) wheels were installed. That includes synthetic steel wool cleanup of all wheel and hub mating surfaces, and very gradual tightening of the lug nuts to final torque. ALL the vibration is gone!

 

Following up on my first post right above… Been riding the new wheel set for a month or so now. They’re incredible! Zero shimmy/shake now, at any speed. Problem completely solved. I’m thoroughly tickled…

 

Interestingly I just got done doing the same and now it's WORSE

I have done:
-new brakes
-ECGS bearing
-Brand new CV axles
-New wheels
-New tires
-Removed wheel spacers

No matter what I do this son of a b*tch shakes

I took it to chitown 4x4 who is a Toyota shop because I thought maybe they would have been familiar with chasing this down, surprisingly he said he had never seen or even HEARD of this problem (which is incredible considering how much talk there is online about it and even the guy at discount tire says he sees 4runners in his shop all the time with this problem). Ended up wasting $1500 there throwing more parts at it and it seemed like he just wanted it gone

After all of this I do have a theory, and my theory would explain why this is so intermittent and hard to track down for a lot of people;

My theory is that the hub bore on a lot of people's wheels are 106.1mm and the hub of the 4runner is 106mm. On normal trucks this wouldn't be an issue, but there is something about the geometry of the 4runner IFS that requires an absolutely perfect balance for a lot of different components and that 0.1mm apparently matters. It explains why people will say this issue started after they did something that involved removing the wheels, or that they kept getting the wheels balanced and suddenly the 5th or 6th time it worked, it's because it's sitting slightly differently on the hub each time and eventually it reached balance.

I did an experiment where I put aluminum tape around the hub of the wheel, which I calculated was 0.04mm thick, and after some trial and error got the wheels on there with the tape to center more perfectly and sure enough it helped the problem. Then strangely the problem came BACK after I did the same on the back wheels ...I didn't even take the front wheels off but I guess raising the back up put more pressure on the front and maybe they shifted somehow?

I've also noticed that torquing the lugs to spec makes the problem worse and backing them off a turn makes it better

I don't know, all I know is this is driving me insane and I can't just keep throwing parts at it. For a truck that I otherwise love its crazy that I might end up having to get rid of this thing because of some stupid IFS gremlin. I've owned 4 Toyota IFS trucks and each one has had some kind of strange gremlins in the front suspension that was impossible to track down.

Anyway, that's all. Maybe one day I'll do a combination of things that lead to the state of nirvana these trucks require to roll down the road smoothly. Signing off for now

 

A few quick questions for you....

Are you running aftermarket wheels?

What type of tires?

Are you having the tires balanced warm and using finger plates on the road force machine with smart weight turned off?

 

Had this 'shake' in my steering wheel after new tires put on. Figured out the affected tires. Had DT rebalance twice and then road force balance. Still a noticed shake. Took the SR5P back and told them to break down the tires.....remove the weights....rotate the tires 180° then reinflate and rebalance. After rotating the tires that 180° took less weight to balance. Smooth as can be now!

 

Don't be too hard on yourself and look how far you have come with this shimmy. I got it too and just gave up and don't bother with it anymore. I had a theory on temperature and tire pressure too. But heck...they are just too many variables. Just drive and enjoy it as is. Go get a cold one too.

 

So I had a steering wheel shake and alignment issues at the same time. This was the solution that worked for me. It does not appear to work on your 4Runner unfortunately but wanted to share anyway.

I bought more road focused tires (Pathfinder HT from discount tire). I also took my 2015 4Runner Trail Premium to a specialized tire shop and had them do an alignment, set a 4.0 caster, 38 psi on the tires, and adjusted the toe so the wheels on the front point in now. After all that I had Discount Tire do a road force balance and that solved both the steering wheel shake and made the 4Runner drive straight.

From looking at the notes I saved I found this about the Lexus GX460

"The key, especially with heavier tires, is to have the shop turn the smart weight function on their hunter balancer off, then use a short cone and haweka adapter when balancing the tires. The lexus tsb that addresses steering wheel flutter on the gx460 outlines this procedure in detail. Be sure that you instruct your shop to get the road force values below 15 for each tire."

 

Okay, so a quick update to contribute to the tribal knowledge of this thread. So after looking over this thread and seeing how people were saying that the finger plates were useful in balancing the tires, I had first taken my 4Runner to discount tire to have the tires rebalanced on the hunter machines and after getting back on the road it was actually worse. Believe it or not. I then read this thread and saw people talking about the finger plate so I decided to go back and talk to somebody there. Who luckily enough Said that they had done the same thing to balance their 37s on their truck. So he took and balanced the tires for me on the hunter machines with the finger plate and after getting done with it he noticed that there was some scalloping on the inside edge of a couple of the tires. I'm assuming that had something to do with an alignment. I had him put the tires of the scalloping on the rear axle and the tires without the scalloping on the front and after doing that the problem was significantly better. I did notice a slight vibration but not in the steering wheel. And then took it to a local mom and pop shop for an alignment and they had recommend to remove my tire carrier from the back hitch before doing the alignment. After some persuasion using a come along in a tree, I was able to get the rear tire carrier out of the hitch and put my tire on top of the roof instead. I took it back to the same shop and had them do the alignment and they had found that it was a little bit out of alignment in a couple regards. After they got done with the alignment, my 4Runner rolls down the road now without any vibration at all. In the course of doing all this. I also had the CV axles replaced and the ECGS bearing installed . I think it was a lot of little things including that the tires were out of balance that it was slightly out of alignment that the CV axles might have been needing replacement, etc

Hopefully this helps somebody out there having the same problem. I used voice to text typing on this so if the punctuation or wording is weird I apologize

 

I did the bearing change, balanced the tires 3 times and still had the shake. Changed back to Toyo's and zero shaking at any speed. Leaving me to believe, finding a good installer that does road force balancing is the key. Just my .02

 

I gave up and just deal with the shake.

Just did a 600mi trip this weekend and successfully ignored the issue entirely. I'm not joking . . . I'm pretty obsessive and shit like this has driven me nuts in the past. I've changed my approach in favor of refining my ability to deny/ignore that which I have been unable to solve. ;-0

Jason

 

The solution for me was to ditch the Nitto Terra Graplers and install Falken WildPeaks..... I had the Nittos balanced 3 times. No issues with the Falken so far.

 

I have it, stock SR5 , new Michlen Defenders , trusted mechanic, balanced twice, aligned dead on , drives straight, more sometimes than others, truck sits a lot. Maybe flat spots , colder weather, I’ve learned to live with it, unfortunately.

 

Here’s my input.. stock Terra Grapplers here. I purchased the rig at 5k miles and for quite a while I’d get a slight shake around 55-62mph. While
It was annoying I was willing to deal with it. About 18 months into ownership I swapped a new TRD Fox Pro setup in and had an alignment with a caster set to 3.5.

After this time I kept a closer eye on tire psi, and admittedly I was running a lower psi prior to this.. around 30 psi cold.

From my perspective the additional caster added during alignment helped alleviate my shake as a rebalance was never performed on my tires.

I did get the occasional flat spot prior
to the suspension install and alignment if I didn’t drive the rig for a few days, however that subsided after the tires warmed up.

My .02. This is not just about tire
balancing but also about ideal alignment numbers. I no longer have any shake at any mph.

 

Michelin Defenders are excellent tires. Did your mechanic balance on a Hunter RF machine with fingers?

 

Not sure, it doesn’t shake all the time, doesn’t do it at highway speeds. It’s weird like the shake spot is 55 - 60 ish

 

That's the typical mph for improperly balanced tires.

Was it balanced on a Hunters machine with finger plates?

If not, get that done. Also, ask them to give you the run-out numbers. If a tire is above 20, then it will cause the shake. You can either have them try to get it below 20, replace/warranty the bad tire, or banish that tire to the rear end.

 

Make an appointment, go in with tires warm. Have the tech road force them with fingers plates and a cone....not just the cone. Torque them in the air starting at 45 ft lbs and then their final torque setting.

This works.

 

Old post but, I think I’ve resolved the issue in my 2024 TRD Pro. Basically it comes to experience of the tire tech. Here is my story: updated to 275 KO3s in Load Range E and never was able to get them to stop the shimmy. Then decided to update to 285s on the stock wheel with C-Loads and still shook, albeit a little less. Then realized that the trd pro rim is too narrow for a 285 tire (only 7inches when the 285s require at least a 7.5 inch)… I didn’t feel safe so I got a set of nice Method 705s and I still had the shimmy. Finally decided to go back to the 275s in load and back to the stock wheel and voila. No shake or shimmy. This cost me a set of tires and a set of wheels ill have to sell after market, but worth it since now I have a smooth ride and reliable e-load tires on stock wheels like I wanted in the first place. Tl;Dr. find a reliable shop with a reliable tech that is willing to take their time and properly balance and not give up on you and your truck. May cost you a lunch for the guys in the shop and a nice review on social media (they like and appreciate that), but worth the feeling of finally getting your truck running smoothly. Good luck!