How to Replace Steering Shaft 2005-15 Toyota Tacoma

You're gonna get inside the vehicle and make sure you tie off the steering wheel, so there's no way it can spin, I use a little bungee cord and it works great. Once your vehicle is raised and supported safely, you're gonna remove all six lug nuts; this one has a wheel lock key. The next thing we want to do is remove the skid shields. Generally speaking, there should be one here and one a little bit further back. Obviously, our rearward one is missing already. Use the 12-millimeter and get them out of the way.

Let's go ahead and get this thing right out of here. I'll just take off all the little push tabs. So now we're gonna go ahead and get off that lower bolt for the steering shaft that leads down to the rack. Just go ahead and put a 12-millimeter on there, break it free and just pay attention to make sure that the rack shaft doesn't turn. If it turns a little bit, that's okay, but we want it to be as straight as possible. Use our bolt. Now I'm gonna take out the two bolts that are holding this in. I have a 17-millimeter nut up top, and then right underneath, I'll find a 17-millimeter bolt head. We'll get both of these out of here.

So now that the rack's out, we know we have that lower bolt out. Let's just go ahead and get the shaft off of here. Pull on the rack a little bit. Awesome. We're gonna remove this bolt right here; use your 12-millimeter. So now I've got my hand underneath through here and I'm holding my steering shaft. If you had a punch of some sort or a long pry bar or whatever you need, I'm just gonna come right down in between here and then I'm gonna try to separate the shaft right up here. All right. I can see it moving, we're doing good. There it is.

Let's go ahead and take some of this copper never-seize, get it right up inside the hole right there, and that's gonna make sure that it's nice and lubricated. That's good with our splined area on this side. Awesome. So if you look at your steering shaft splines here, you're gonna see a slotted area, that's along the area where you're gonna have the bolt go through. So if you have this spun, the bolt is not gonna go through. I've got my flat area facing up and the general direction of where the bolt goes through, slide it right in. Once you have it lined up, you can start in that bolt.

Now making sure that that steering wheel is still straight, we're just gonna slide this up on here. Give it a little wiggle, you should feel it you want to slide right in. Awesome. I'm gonna go ahead and start in this lower bolt here. I like to use a tiny bit of thread locker on my pinch bolt, we'll call it your prerogative. Go ahead and put it through there. I'm just gonna snug it up and then we'll torque it to manufacturer specifications. Now we're just gonna torque these down to 26-foot pounds. There it is.

Now it's time to get the rack mounting bolts in so we're just gonna turn this back around to the right direction. There it is. Start that nut on there. Do the same to the other side. Let's go ahead and bottom these out. Torque these to 68-foot pounds. Let's put our shield up on here. You have your mounting areas on these plates. If you want to hit them with some copper never-seize, it's not a bad idea. Okay, we're cruising. Let's get the wheel back up on here. And of course, get all your lug nuts on and started. Let's go ahead and bottom out all the lug nuts. All right. Let's go ahead and torque the wheel in a crisscross pattern to 83-foot pounds. Torqued.