Hilux 4x4 Forum

Good evening all
Hope I can get some advice here.
On a trip yesterday my hilux out of the blue started intermittently pulling to the right after about two hours on the road.
There appeared to be no pattern to the frequency of the 'pull or bind' with them lasting a split second to probably no more than a couple of seconds in length. Each time releasing and driving normally again.
I opted to turn around and in the nearby town got TWT to lift and check and do alignment.
There was nothing noticeably loose or any untoward sounds from the bearings or cvs.

After the alignment it was even worse than prior so decided to turn around, grab some lunch and abandoned the trip.

The vehicle misbehaved for maybe 20km initially then cleared up and the rest of the journey there was no issue.

Today on taking it out it immediately started with the problem again and then cleared up after about 5km and didn't have any further problems.

On getting home after the first trip I felt the front brakes, both were warm not hot, however the front right was slightly warmer than the left.

Vehicle has 210 000km on it and we are based in Zim on pretty poor roads a fair amount of time.

Hoping for some suggestions before diving in and changing parts.

Thank you

Hi Doug. A very strange and unusual problem indeed. I'm not very familiar with later model Hilux's ... still old school SFA. So I'm taking a complete shot in the dark here when I say that this sounds to me more like an intermittent electrical issue rather than a mechanical one. Mechanical problems are normally constantly there. If I'm correct then the only thing I can think of is that the ADD (Automatic Diff Decoupler ... that's in the front) may be intermittently engaging on it's own due to a wiring / connection problem. Perhaps you can disconnect it at the diff (if that's possible) and see if the problem persists.

That said, I also don't know if it can engage / disengage on it's own mechanically ... (like a spring that's broken or come loose ... who knows), in which case it would still occur if the ADD were disconnected. Vexing!

Whatever it is, it's also likely that bumps / vibrations from poor road conditions may be triggering it.

To my mind, it's not impossible, but at the same time unlikely that it's a brake related issue as that would affect all wheels.

Just my immediate thoughts .... Hope you get it resolved and it would be interesting to hear the cause of it.

Good afternoon Mud dog,

Thanks very much for your reply. Your suggestion was also mentioned to be yesterday by a mechanic in Harare who I use so I would say it has some merit and is worth investigating. He suggested I remove the front prop shaft and then test it for a few days to see if the problem persists so I will do that on the weekend when I have some time to fight those bolts(tried yesterday and they are going to be a challenge!)

Will update here once I have some more.

Thank you again