NewHilux.net

Hey,

Hope you guys/girls can help, I've just taken delivery of a new Hilux dual cab, 2.8 auto, the moment I sat in it I noticed that the front left hand side felt lower than the right hand side, by a fair margin.

I put the Hilux on level ground and measured the arches to the floor, and there was easily 15mm lower on front left and about the same on the rear right, the car also pulls the left.

I checked tyres pressures and they where all good, and I also loaded the drivers seat up with some weight to see if it was built in sag to allow for level driving when the driver was in the cab.. got upto 155kg before I gave up on that as it hardly budged at all.

I've checked the front struts and springs and they look to normal and good.

From the back the truck looks broken as it has so much lean on it.

I don't know if this is a common issue with pickup trucks, but it seems way too much to feel like its meant to be normal.

I did do some little googling and noticed its not the first time this has come up, so is there a solution to the problem?

Going to take the front anti-roll bar off the front tomorrow and put it on the corner weight scales and see if its just got more weight on that front corner, or its tripoding itself across the other two corners (Front right and rear left)

Silly question, are the leaf springs on the back handed? (Reason I say that as mentioned above about the cross tripoding, if there is a heavier sprung spring on the left rear due to the fuel tank being on that side, it would be pushing up harder and as the engine is the heavier end, it will actually pivot between rear left and front right and cause the front left to be lower).

hope that makes sense.

Any help would be appreciated.

Also, are the front springs same length? Are they handed?

Leaning to the left seems to be a common thing with them. My 2017 model did it & also my new 2022 model as well. I try & load all the heavy stuff on the right side to even it up. Very frustrating though. In carparks it looks like something is wrong with it.
Silverfox

Silverfox1111 wrote:Leaning to the left seems to be a common thing with them. My 2017 model did it & also my new 2022 model as well. I try & load all the heavy stuff on the right side to even it up. Very frustrating though. In carparks it looks like something is wrong with it.
Silverfox

That’s madness that Toyota let’s this go, I will have to find a solution and why it is like
It.

Only thing I can think of is springs on either front or rear are different or odd set up with anti-roll bar.

It was like it when it arrived, and had 5ltr of fuel in, with 20ltr more still miles out. Car only has 3 miles on it and not driving it to I work out why it looks like a cat c write off.

Being new it shouldn't be like this. You mentioned it pulled to the left? Try taking it to an independent supplier to get them to "CHECK" the wheel alignment, discussing with them what your concerns are. This might give you new information to take back to the dealership for a.possible warranty claim. Let us know how you go, sounds like there might be others interested in what you find.

I'm defo going to be going into this with a find tooth comb to find the issue, as I will not be just excepting it as is thats for sure. Specially how much Toyota asks for these trucks now lol.

Image doesn't really show how much it looks like in real life, it looks proper off when viewing it in person.

Hopefully it makes sense, levelled the image in photoshop using the brickwork as a level, so image is perfectly alined to that... then the second green line down is parallel to top line... and the red square shows the difference on the n/s being lower.. or another way of looking at it is the o/s is higher. Not the same basically lol.



Someone else selling a Hilux same as mine for rape money online, so thought they wouldn't mind lending me the images for this next bit, I took the two side image, the left and right, and flipped the one side so they where both facing the same way and matched them ontop of each other in photoshop, once they matched flipped it back and put it nose to nose.. so actually was perfect! SO now I know its not just a Hilux thing.. its just some of them suffer from it type of thing.



Then I did the same with mine and hopefully you can see mine is far bit lower on the front n/s, about 10-15mm which is enough to look like its sinking into the ground on that corner and the back high in the are on the opposite rear corner.

BTW mine is the dirty black one incase that wasn't obvious lol

your car is higher on the right side because its designed as a right hand drive vehicle and when the driver sits in it should be somewhat straight.
Imagine the "poor LHD drivers"': mine also was lower on the left side by approx. 10 mm and I was not even sitting in there. A spacer on the left shock helped me out.
Btw: measuring should always be done from the center of the wheel to the wheelarch to eliminate mistakes from e.g. different tire pressures....

raili wrote:your car is higher on the right side because its designed as a right hand drive vehicle and when the driver sits in it should be somewhat straight.
Imagine the "poor LHD drivers"': mine also was lower on the left side by approx. 10 mm and I was not even sitting in there. A spacer on the left shock helped me out.
Btw: measuring should always be done from the center of the wheel to the wheelarch to eliminate mistakes from e.g. different tire pressures....

I have done a fair bit of research on this now and I think what your saying is from other models which do in fact have different leaf packs and are handed, but I think this has been generalised and I don't believe it to be true for the new Hilux. I however am open minded to finding such information that supports this within Toyota specs.

I have found many example of lean the other way in vehicles that are also RHD, and while not perfect as you mentioned you can clearly see the blue car above is one of those examples where it sits level. (That vehicle arrived in the UK at the same time also so its not of a different age) There is a strong argument that if the vehicle is being driven on the left hand side of the road and the road cambers away, then you would actually want it to lean the other way to counter the road surface, this would actually be doubling the issue not helping it.

The fuel tank has a range from usable 5ltrs to 80ltrs, the density of diesel is 0.84kg/ltr, so that range is 4.2kg to 67.2kg, so that tank alone would balance out a driver which would typically be around 75kg.. I'm actually very tall and bulky at 130kg, I do not even come close to levelling the vehicle when I'm sitting in it, so that is a factor of 2x. SO if anything again there would be more support on left hand side and not how it is.

It is highly unlikely they would build an offset into the chassis itself, that would cause problems with different models and weights, this is just my opinion.

My gut feeling is that I have a leaf pack that doesn't match the other side, and is pushing up on the back of the car.. now as mentioned above I've checked the part numbers on the rear leaf packs and they are not handed and do not have any identification to say they are, so I could easily proof this by swapping the leaf pack from side to side, if the problem follows this and leans the other way we know the issue, if it doesn't then it rules it out.

I will report back, and I'm also open minded to be proven completely wrong which is totally fine with me, I just want the truth and facts, if all Hilux's did this then fine, but they don't, so for me its abnormal behaviour and its not right as it feels unsafe due to the fact the rear right wheel has allot less weight on it.

I think I may solves the issue and it’s actually something I called out Toyota on before I actually had the vehicle believe it or not.

Not driven to confirm 100% but my preliminary findings that tyre support was the not enough and causing truck to lean to the one side aggressively.

I first took the Anti-Roll bar links off the front and it had some amount of pre-load in it, so it wasn’t in it’s designed position so then moved onto shocks as they have gas in them and actually push up on the truck causing it to be higher slightly at the back, so uncoupling these from the axle and allowing to just on the leaf pack it didn’t change anything at all, also took the opportunity to bounce the truck like a mad man to settle the packs and again same result.

I set up my corner weight platforms and put the truck on them, so the truck was laser lined to make sure all tyre contacting the area was on the same plane, so it was 100% true and level. I loaded the back with the weight to simulate a full tank and still didn’t level it.

So I started referencing the truck and as mentioned above first thing I always check are all the rims at the same height on the bottom edge as this would throw anything above it out… and boom, front N/S tyre was sitting 8-9mm lower, so there was more weight on that corner and tyre was not supporting the load.

Now I had already set the tyres a little higher to 35psi/F and 33psi/R, but it actually took 54psi/NSF and 35psi/OSF to bring the rim up to sit at the same height.

Now the truck sits almost level, within a few mm which is in tolerance imho.

The tyres that are installed on mine are Bridgestone DUELER A/T 693 III 265/65R17 (Ditch Finders), here these are classed as C1 tyres (EU Classification)(C1 = passenger vehicle, C2 = Light Truck and C3 = lorry/bus), so even though these meet the load rating they are very very soft, with the tyre off the rim you can push the tyre flat without any effort… I had argue that the Pickup truck is classed as Lights good vehicle here and should come with C2 tyres (I.e LT Light truck), I was told I was basically wrong and Toyota was right.

As the side walls are made so thin it only makes sense it will require more psi to hold the vehicle up properly.

The KM3 LT265/70R17 I’m replacing them with will have no such issues as they are a E-Rated 10 ply tyre, so this will solve my issue.

I would happily run a few psi difference from side to side of weight was more but 20psi is a no no.

Imho Toyota has fitted these limp dick tyres with soft side walls to “improve” ride comfort as it was cheaper than redesigning the chassis…

Does not answer the issue for those who still have a lean with uprated tyres though, so I leave the door open to having somewhat of a margin of error on what I’m saying here, but it’s fixed the issue for me!

Well I have to eat humble pie on this, I was wrong, after installing new tyre (KM3 LT265/70R17) and pumping them upto 80psi the lean is the same as before.

Back to the drawing board.

As was previously pointed out ride height is normally measured from wheel center to guard, not from the ground. It's done that way to remove all the tyre related variables and stay on track.

Any updates?

I have a set of OME BP-51 full kit to install on the truck, I've not driven the truck while its leaning over and its just been parked up. (Still only done 180miles from new!) really should get it sorted lol

Will update if it resolves it will mean it was a leaf spring or something causing it, if its still there then its the chassis.