Cam bolt question.

I plan to remove my cam bolts for alignment adjustments to put anti seize on them. Is there anything other than the bolt I should do this to?

I am doing this because my alignment tech warned me about them freezing up and suggested it.

 

Bump

 

You got a good mechanic.

Remove the bolts and AS'ing them and replace. The AS keeps the bolts from rusting to the sleeves. Coating the bolts is all you really need to do.

If you are in preventive maintenance mode, think about AS'ing the pins on the brake calipers. That will really help when time to change pads.

I'm actually amazed that the mechanic suggested this. Toyota never added any of this lube from the factory on any generation of Tacoma.

You might be able to tell, but this is a sore subject for me. I've had to cut off and destroy 3 lower control arms over the years because of this issue. The job sucks as well as cost a lot of money that could have been avoided by adding a few cc's of grease.

 

Thank you for the reply. My truck only has 5k on it and the one bolt was already creaking and making noise when he turned it to do the alignment. I definitely don't wanna let it go a whole lot longer. Hopefully it's not to late already, it did turn tho.

If it is frozen in there when I go to take it out I'll be trying to get it covered under warranty before I cut the lca off a new truck.

 

If its turning even while squeaking, you have nothing to worry about. Just pull them and lube them and you will be good.

Make sure and mark the cam positions with some paint so you can replace the bolts and not have to get another alignment.

Cheers


Kirk

 

"My alignment tech" Are you a professional? I ask because if you remove your cam bolts to apply anti-seize (which I think is an excelent preventive maintenance task), you will need to do an alignment on the truck right away. Why wouldn't the alignment tech say "hmm, I know that these seize, why don't I lube them while I'm doing an alignment" Or am I missing something?

Then again, with the amount of specialization today, perhaps alignment techs don't touch lube.

 

Yes, you can do this, but I wouldn't trust it myself. Not only would I worry about getting it back correctly, the damn things are so touchy.
Besides, I just cleaned and lubed the bolts... where did the paint go? But that's may be just me

 

Yep.

It's really not that hard.

 

Alignment techs don't remove the bolts to align, just loosen. They aren't paid to fully remove them and lube. In many cases the Techs are checking the alignment first, if the numbers are good, the bolts won't even be loosened. Out the door the truck goes.

In just about all cases, the need to do adjustment is because the truck was in a situation where there was trauma to the front end. This could be years down the road. New trucks won't have froze cam bolts.