Need info on this and if Toyota is responsible

We turned into our driveway yesterday after a 3 hour trip back from near Atlanta. Suddenly, the truck didn’t want to move forward. I got out to look and saw the problem (pics). What is this part called exactly. Someone said it’s the ball joint connector and the nut that is no longer there should have been torqued at the factory and should not have come off. The cotter pin that is the safety device is also gone and the bolt is stripped. Nothing has been done to the suspension/steering that we know of and this is a 2020 in excellent condition and has been maintained and “inspected” by our dealership. We were very fortunate to have made it home! Thanks.

 

I spy a spacer lift, could be that it wasn’t installed properly or bolts tightened up after. Did it collapse like that when you got home??? That’s nuts. Oops just saw that it did in fact happen at home, thank god. Still sucks though

 

Red is the upper control arm. Yellow is the upper ball joint that is pressed into the upper control arm. The ball joint connects the upper control arms to the spindle.

The second photo is showing how it all goes together on a factory truck.

 

Someone has been poking around in there. I too see what looks like some sort of spacer lift. Glad you made it home safely.

 

I agree on some kind of spacer lift.
Toyota isn't to blame for that, unless they installed the spacer lift.

I had this exact issue with a lower control arm when a shop forgot to install the cotter pin on the spindle..
6 months later the nut worked it's way off and I hit the right bump to pop the spindle out of the LCA..

I filed a claim with insurance since it was due to negligence and they sued the shop that did it.
I even got my deuctable back.
I traded that 2005 truck in while it was in the shop and bought my 2014.




Hopefully, you'll just need a new ball joint, hardware, and an alignment..
And have whoever fixes it check the torque on your entire front end..
Good luck...

 

Thanks to everyone! I’ll update it once I know more. We bought it used so the prior unknown owner may have put in spacer lifts. It’s a sobering thing to see and I hope anyone else that has had it happen didn’t get hurt.

 

At least you got stopped before it did any more damage..
Good luck on getting it repaired..

 

Could someone draw an arrow or circle where the spacer is? I’ve never seen any before.

 

Spacer circled yellow.

 

As @Slag_Dynamics indicated, is the portion above the front coilover. Only way to install one is to fully remove the front coil over assembly and add in the spacer. You can see that the bolts on the coil over are only secured to the spacer, and the spacer adds new bolts that go thru that upper bracket to secure the front shock assembly. I would look to see if you have any thread protrusion, I'm not seeing any but it could be angle and there is only a thread or 2 above the nuts.

Its apples and oranges, but you can see i have a lot of thread protrusion on my front shock after installation.

 

Just an update. The Tundra is sitting in the lot behind the service dept., waiting on some part from Japan. Seems like everything associated with connecting to the wheel was stretched or damaged. The wrecker guy did a great job getting it on the flatbed. I was holding the steering wheel to keep everything straight. I guess no one helped getting it off because the wheel is canted way out from top to bottom. The first thing they did was point out the “tampering” because of the lifts. Oh well. It’s got a 100k warranty from CarMax. We’ll see. Estimate now is $1700 parts and labor. They’ll know more when they can get it into a bay. I’m still just damn glad we’re alive! I had my 2020 Tacoma SR5 checked on Wednesday, including the ball joints lol! I think it has lifts on it too. It passed with flying colors but they did want to do about $2k of “recommended” stuff. Mainly because they had the mileage near 60k instead of the actual 35k. Gotta watch’em!

 

After a month, we got it back home. It cost around $5K because of all the damage plus the person who put on the lifts cross-threaded the castle nut on the control arm of CV axle on the left side. Or something like that. So the CV axle needed replacement on that side too. The total cost is probably higher than an independent mechanic would have been cheaper but I don’t know of a good one around here. Doesn’t matter. It’s my wife’s truck and I want her to be safe! They did have trouble getting that one part. It took me 10 minutes to find it at an Atlanta dealership after the service rep said they couldn’t find it anywhere. I told them that I would be happy to have a paying job to help them find parts for the parts department if they couldn’t find them. Lol! Next step is to see if MaxCare will cover some of the cost.