Steering issue after all new ball joints

As much as I wanted to replace my ball joints myself and save the money, I have no tools. My neighbor owns a shop and gave me a ridiculously good price on changing all 4 so i decided to do that. They called me today and said that when they test drove it, it was steering/bump steering so bad that he almost got into an accident with it and wouldn’t let me drive it away. He said I need new struts and a sway bar link to fix the issue (which I definitely do need new struts, but it didn’t drive thaat bad before). I know the alignment is off after changing the joints, but would changing the struts actually fix the new horrible driving issue? Or would an alignment be all that I really needed? I’m afraid they’ll put the new struts on and it’ll have the exact same issue until I get it aligned

 

Changing the UBJ & LBJ shouldn’t cause issue with steering unless the OTR/ITR got adjusted. For what and why would be the question.

 

The shop broke one of my LCA’s and replaced it for free, but to my knowledge (I’m not knowledgeable at all about this lol) the LCA isn’t connected to the tie rods at all. Could something with the new control arm possibly be the reason?

 

They must remove the cam bolt, causing alignment to be thrown off if they didn’t mark it prior to removing it. When installing new LCA and not knowing where the cam bolt was originally at, that’s the issue.

 

Alignment wouldn't be off because of the upper and lower ball joints, but like 02hilux mentioned, the removal of the cam bolt means it might be out of alignment now.

Can you grab pictures for us and post them here? We can try and see if things were assembled correctly again.

Were the correct parts used? I can see this being an issue if for some reason the lower ball joints for a 4Runner were used since they use different tie rod ends.

 

I went ahead and picked up some new struts today so hopefully they’ll be done with it tomorrow and I can post pics if it’s not resolved. I want all OEM with the ball joints so I don’t think they’re the issue

 

Does anyone wonder how this "shop" managed to break a control arm changing a ball joint? It's 4 bolts and a castle nut...

 

Yes, very much so. Must have used a big sledge hammer instead of a pitman arm puller. Even that shouldn't break a lower control arm.

 

It’s actually one of, if not the most widely respected shop in my area. They always do fantastic work, but since he was giving me such a good deal I’m assuming he put the apprentice on the job. He said something along the lines of the guy didn’t know that he could remove the ball joint without removing the LCA and ended up drilling/grinding into it to get it off? Something like that, but I’m happy to have a free new control arm. I told him he was welcome to break the other side too lol