HELP! Steering Knock / Rattle (1 Viewer)

[96TrailSurfer]

Hoping someone can help me diagnose this as it's driving me nuts. Vehicle is a 96 KZN-185, lifted 2-3.5", with Tundra Bilstein 5100 shocks, Eibach 620# coils, and SPC UCAs in front.

Background:
- Steering is nice and tight when driving on regular roads.
- Very little play in the steering.

Problem:
- As soon as I get offroad, and especially when I put the truck H4 or H4L (it has a multimode transfer case), I start getting a lot of knocking / rattling in the steering column, so much that have to sometimes hold the steering tight wheel with both hands just to keep control.

What I've done so far:
- new outer tie rods
- tilt ball shim mod - helped with steering play, but didn't do much for the rattle
- new steering rack and sway bar bushings - no apparent difference
- upgraded to the new style steering rack guide - not sure if it made any difference

Things to try?
- zip tie in the rag joint mod that's done on 2nd/3rd gen Tacos - as far as I can tell, the design of my rag joint is significantly different and I haven't found anyone who has done this mod on a 3rd gen 4runner;
- slip joint tack weld / rolled pin mod - my truck is a 96 and has a different style slip joint, which doesn't seem to need this mod. Plus, there is no play in the slip joint, at least not that I could feel by hand when I took it off

I had an intermediate steering shaft lying around from a donor truck and I examined it for similar sound. It does seem to make a similar clunk (video here), seemingly from the top u-joint hitting the component below. Not sure if it's supposed to be that way, or something is worn out.

Any ideas?

 

[BlueCruiser84]

I feel your pain. I don’t have any answers for you though. My slip joint is welded and I added a shin to the tilt ball. Normal driving is great. Anything bumpy sounds like the whole front end is going to fly apart along with the steering wheel. No play in rod ends and I can get just a tiiiiny bit of movement out of my control arm bushings. Could be those. They look original.

I’ll be interested to see what you find. What’s a Ken-185?

 

[96TrailSurfer]

I am leaning more and more to the issue being the rag joint, but not yet sure how to fix it

KZN-185 is a 3rd generation Hilux Surf with 1KZ-TE engine.

 

[SL0WHUG0]

Add to me to the list of guys with the same problem. It's driving me insane. I'm thinking it's my LCA bushings that are 190k old. While my mechanic couldn't find any significant play in them, I've read that any tiny amount of slop can make all the difference. The mechanic blamed the s***ty steering on my trailing arms (or rear lower control arms) not having much bushing left and tons of slop, but I have a hard time believing that's solely the issue. My wheel bobbles back and forth when I drop off the inch at the end of my driveway, before the rear end/axle even changes elevation or terrain.