Knuckle tweek

ponykilr

ponykilr

Old Crow
Joined
Apr 26, 2021
Location
Lowgap
I acquired Jeremy’s 2000 4Runner and I am getting a few things to my liking. One thing he told me about was the RF camber situation.

The truck has aftermarket adjustable upper control arms, offset ball joints and the lower control arms are maxed and still camber is visually positive (with everything maxed to get it less positive)

Truck has Sonoran springs and is lifted but not excessively so. I have had 3rd gens with more and didn’t have camber issues.

Doing some checking it seems the left side knuckle is closer to the wheel by about 3/4” - 1” or so. This could explain the positive camber on the right (although I have no clue how the knuckle could be bent that direction)

Anyhoo, there is not much I can think of to bring the RF camber more neutral other than possibly removing the knuckle and using my press to bend it a little.

It appears forged, any issues with this idea? Should I heat it or bend it cold? Will I die?

🤷🏼‍♂️
 
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Well I cannot find where these get tweeked on purpose but they are forged and get welded on regularly for reinforcement.

This truck has Taco knuckles due to the manual hub conversion. I think I will heat the offending one a bit and put it in the press to make it match the other one.
 
You might consider welding on some knuckle gussets while you've got it apart, especially if it's already started to fail.
 
OK more on the camber caper.

I spoke to several Toyota guys online and all said that with SBC upper control arms there is no way I couldn’t get the camber right with the amount of lift I have.

I took the spindle/knuckle off of the truck (left the hub/bearings in it) and took some simple measurements of the amount of bend. I compared this to the other side and it was obvious there was a good bit of difference. The right side was “straighter” with less bend and easily caused the camber to be too positive.

So I mocked it up in my shop press to add to the bend which would take camber more negative on right of the truck. I gently heated the area with my torch and started applying pressure. It didn’t take long and I had it pretty close to measurement on the good side.

So I allowed it to cool slowly and once I could handle it, I reassembled the right side.

I couldn’t have gotten it closer 🙂

I was able to set the rear cam almost in the identical position as the left side and the SBC adjustable upper ball joint went in the same approximate position as the left as well.

Camber is now zero just like the other side. Caster, at least by the front cam setting is just like the left. I have zero pull on the road, the wheel is in the wheel well in the same position as the left (was forward in the wheel well before) and it drives much better.

I set the toe by bungeeing a 2x4 to the rear wheel lips and used string on each side stretched over to the front to measure the front of the wheel vs. the rear of the wheel. I set toe as close to zero as humanly possible, I will tweak it later if needed but … dang it drives so nice that unless there is tire wear I think it’ll be fine.

Now until it snaps and I die in fiery crash I am calling it a success.
 
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