Alright, time to admit it—the lift ruined the 4Runner. I don’t know if it’s because it’s 2WD or because I squeezed a few extra inches out of it than advertised, but the suspension geometry on this thing has been an absolute nightmare. And that’s saying something, because every vehicle I’ve owned has had suspension mods.

Since moving, my daily drive has gone from a quick 20-minute city hop to nearly 50 minutes of Texas highway. And not your average highway either—the kind where the speed limit is a suggestion and the shoulder doubles as a passing lane. After a few weeks at those speeds, something just felt off.

I know what a driveline vibration feels like, and this had all the symptoms. It finally clicked that while I’ve spent all this time fighting the front suspension geometry, I haven’t done a thing to the rear. So, I grabbed a cheap digital angle gauge, crawled under the truck, and started measuring. I found it best to zero the gauge on the drive shaft as close to the transmission as possible and, with the help of some clamps, secure a piece of flat bar across the pinion flange and clamping my gauge to it. Sure enough—about 3 degrees off.