Toyota Hilux dual cab

Hi Peter K

I have a 2000 Dual Cab Hilux, and people have told me that it appears to have a bent chassis, but upon closer inspection, they realised it was the "wishbones" of the Indepent Front Suspension that made it appear so.

This may be the case with the vehicles that you haver seen, or they may be bent. Just a thought for you.

Cheers

Pretty much every dual cab ute is prone to this happening.

What causes it is usually a heavy trailer/camper on the rear and air bag springs. The heavy weight on the rear and the caft that the springs are acting like a lever, or like seesaw if you like. Has been alot of dual cabs with this happen, and all have had airbags.

I'm guessing that because they have a tray rather than a full body as such, the point of flex is between the tray & the cab...the full body of a wagon might strengthen & reduce the flex of the chassis at this point or at least share it over a greater area.

I assuming that the chassis would be very similar to say a Prado & I haven't heard of the issue like this with them....

Another factor sometimes is the trays are not well engineered and put extra stress on the chassis. I have heard this can happen if the tray is too rigid. The tray needs to flex.

Flynnie

Very common - and just to add that it mostly happens with dual cabs but not single cabs because of poor weight distribution - dual cabs have very little weight in the cab and then a heap of weight behind the rear axle.

Then they get a tray thats a bit longer and hang the spare wheels off the rear and put in an extra 150 litres of diesel because their fuel tanks are woefully small....and then they fit the airbags because the rear end sags.....and then they tow a trailer with 200kg ball weight over some rough stuff.....and it lacks the extra rigidity of a full body.... so then out in the desert they notice a widening gap appearing between the tray and cab.The gap widens as the chassis bends or cracks and then it goes no further because the tailshaft is pushing into the diff creating problems there....

Very costly errors - not really a manufacturing defect because the vehicles are often over GVM or tow ball limits and are inappropriately loaded with modified suspension.

So if you are a dualcab owner and want to prevent this from happening, you need to keep the heavy stuff (water and fuel) forward of the rear axle and take measures to reduce the towball weight from anything you tow..... or else upgrade your vehicle.

Cheers
Phil