Should my front sway bar move like this?
 

Hey guys - I've been trying to solve a problem with my steering feeling loose / sloppy. I tried rotating my tires today to see if that would do anything. I noticed two things:

A: My front sway bar seems to move in the bushings with just pulling/pushing on it. Should it be doing this? Here's a video -
you can see it best at the 10 second mark.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3mh1Rga_NM"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3mh1Rga_NM[/ame]

B: After rotating the tires and putting everything back on, I noticed that my rear end feels super loose. The tires spin on 90 degree turns / it feels wobbly. I made sure to torque the lug nuts down to snug before lowering in the car and then torquing them to 100 ft/lbs after the car was on the ground. Did I possibly mess something up? Could I have messed up the alignment?

Thanks everyone.

The sway bars don't look that bad, but it's far to easy for them to move like that. Maybe new sway bar bushing, or endlinks are in order. Have you hit any deep potholes lately? Or jumped a curb?

As far as the tires go, you always want the pair with the most thread on the rears.
That would keep the rear from getting that lose feeling.

Have you made sure you have the same tire pressure on all four? You might want to take it in to get an alignment recheck. If it's still not feeling right, the answer could be your tires are just worn out.

Ok - I'll have the Toyota dealership look at the bushings/end links. I drove from San Jose to Tracy and I started feeling it the day after - certain parts of 580 are really bumpy/full of potholes, so that could've been it. I also accidentally bumped my front splitter into one of those parking stops, but hardly at a high enough speed to do anything I would imagine.

Tires are all at 38.5 psi - they have a ton of tread left, so I doubt they're that worn out already. Should I re-rotate the backs to the front?

Yeah you could try and swap out the tires again. Just make sure they are on the right direction if they are directional tires.

All it takes is one good hit from a deep pothole to screw things up.

:slap: ....... you KNOW what you need to do ....... just do it!

:eyebulge:


humfrz

Haha alright, alright, appointment with alignment shop is on Wednesday. Thanks everyone.

Good plan!

Please keep us posted on what they find out......;)


humfrz