My name is Andrew Mettle and I work in the automotive industry. I am a Team Leader at a Toyota Dealership in Lancaster, Ohio. I have been around, owned or driven hundreds of makes and models of cars new and used. I have also owned my fair share. Recently I purchased a 2017 Toyota 4Runner JTEBU5JR9H5470030 (Sep. 2, 2017), and within the first couple hundred miles of driving in I noticed a really bad steering wheel shimmy/walk/shake. I am not sure what is the best way to describe it.

I brought it back into the dealership (at that time I worked at a Kia dealership) to have them look at it. They balanced the wheels and checked the alignment and said it was fixed. I picked it up and nothing was fixed so the car ended back up in the shop for the another I believe 9 days as they tried to balance the tires bought new equipment to balance the tires better, switch tires and wheels from another 4Runner to finally saying that all 4 tires where no good and switching them out and using the new machine to road force balance them. Did it help? Yes it did, for about a week. Unfortunately, it all came back just the same.

At this point I was tired of dealing with it so I just figured I would suck it up an accept it because it was only a lease and even though I wanted to buy it out at the end I didn't have to. Then in February I ended up getting a position at the Toyota dealership and the problem was bothering me so bad still that I decided to try again to get it fixed since I didn't have to drive my car anywhere extra because now I worked there. Again they road force balanced the tires and said it was fine and then another week or two went by and I asked them to check the alignment which was was off (probably from the constant shimmy) and they fixed that. I even reached out to Toyota to see if they would buy the car back since I was a good Toyota client. They said that the car was within guidelines. So here I am.

I am not trying to get rich or get a settlement. All I want is for someone to look into this long existing problem that the Toyota 4Runner has that Toyota denies. It might never help my situation out but maybe just maybe it could help someone else out in the future. I am attaching some links that will show you that this is been a long ongoing problem that Toyota won't address. Thanks for listening.

https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/Discussion-t60099_ds754672

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/219545-steering-wheel-shimmy-too-much-information.html

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f193/5th-gen-4runner-vibration-shimmy-262624/

https://www.4runners.com/threads/steering-wheel-vibration.1780/

https://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/16246/toyota/4runner/toyota-4runner-vibrations/p6