G’day folks,
Well, for a few months now I have been trying to track down this problem with the Prado.

For those who don’t know, torque steer causes the vehicle to steer to one direction on acceleration and back the other when the foot is removed from the accelerator.

The Prado was continually pulling to the right under acceleration, to the left when backing off and straight ahead the rest of the time.

The boys at work checked all the front and rear suspension bushes, but they looked reasonable. None had too much movement when tested and none seemed to be split or cracked in any way.

The only thing to do was to start replacing things one by one until the problem is found.

First the left hand upper rear track rod was replaced as bushes are not sold separately. This helped a little.
Next the right hand upper rear track rod was replaced. Again another slight improvement.

And yesterday I replaced the the four bushes in the two rear lower trailing arms. This has made the biggest difference.

When the trailing arms were removed, the bushes were inspected and to the eye they looked like perfectly good ones. However, over time the rubber had become soft, which was allowing too much rear axle movement on acceleration and back off.

So I will now start to look at replacing the front bushes.

Email: info@4x4galore.com
Author – Doug Johnston

Tip:

Remember, a 4x4 cannot be treated like a normal car when cornering. The 4WD will roll over much easier than a car while cornering, due to the higher center of gravity. This applies to gravel and paved roads equally. Although a four wheel drive vehicle generally has better traction on gravel than a car, when safe cornering speeds are exceeded the four wheel drive will tend to roll earlier than a car.