Handling (1 Viewer)

[crab]

New member here with 25 Overtrail plus.

First roadtrip cruising down interstate around 70MPH when a merging car forced a quick lane change leftward . Another vehicle was changing lane into that lane however requiring a quick rightward turn to avoid collision but this had me headed back to original car therefore I had to veer slightly back to the left . Overall the left, right than left maneuvers at high speed created a disconcerting oscillating “springing” or dancing from left to right tires of about 3 cycles After the evasive maneuvers .this resolved with neutralization of steering and decreasing speed. Felt like it would not have taken much more to flip the vehicle . Obviously my maneuvering caused the issue but this was not major swerving and do not think it would have been an “event “ in a car or my wife’s xc90. Genuinely surprised by what happened and It gave me new found respect of the meaning of center of gravity with this truck .
With all that said , I was wondering if anyone experienced issue or has advice re: if there would be real world differences in adjusting track of tires with spacers or tire sidewall sizes from purely stability issues . i have stock tires and 99 % street driving . I love my new GX and still learning. Appreciate all the info from older threads as well.

 

[cmfhsu]

Sorry to hear about your scary experience.

Every vehicle is going to have a perfect harmonic frequency that will cause the suspension to oscillate and wobble like you described - you might have just found it in a very scary, unlucky time - especially because our soft suspension and high center of gravity will both lower that harmonic frequency.

If it puts you at ease at all, the car should have rollover protection algorithms in the stability control systems that will cut in and help mitigate the risk of a rollover. Plus - our cars can get to like 30 degrees when off roading without tipping over, so while it might feel tippy, I bet you were pretty far from actually rolling.

But I do think this feeling is a natural part of suspension design - not something which a wider track could help alleviate. You can also make sure to run in normal suspension mode (not comfort or eco) to help, because it's significantly stiffer and more damped. I never run comfort suspension on the highway because I also hate the feeling of body roll at high speeds - it's scary and reduces my confidence.

 

[oldseniu]

What you described reminded me. There was one time I was driving on a busy highway at 110 km/h (70 mph). A J250 landcruiser changed lane and passed me at higher speed and sway back into the line quickly. While doing so, I observed the body roll during the maneuver and kind surprised and concerned by the degree of tilting visually as I am driving a vehicle essentially on the same chasis as the J250. However, after some careful thinking, I think it appears worse than it actually is. The body-roll and vibration you observed were part of the characteristics of a body-on-frame vehicle. Toyota with such long history of building this kind vehicle must baked the body-roll into the design. Remeber, GX and J250 Landcruiser have top their speed limited at 170 km/h (105 mph) which is much lower than the 210 km/h LX has. I have faith that Toyota has done testing and know the limitation of these vehicles.

 

[crab]

thx for replies. Hopefully was just body roll but felt more like skipping in those seconds…Wondering if combination of stock tires and loose suspension ( was in comfort mode at the time) would allow enough built up recoil to do this. ( after this happened I put it in sport mode for the rest of the drive, lol). Would be great to see pro driver demonstrate the limits of this vehicle in such situations. Certainly realize it’s not a sports car. Do you think 1 inch spacers would make a significant difference… not that i plan on replicating the experience.