2010 III with vague hwy handling

Hello, anybody have any suggestions on what I can do to make my car ride better on the highway? It wanders back and forth at higher speeds and it's really annoying possibly dangerous. I bought it used with 100,000 miles, but its been maintained well, the shocks feel fine, and its got nearly new Michelin Defenders on it, stock size. It now has 120k miles on it. I'm wondering if this is just a normal trait for this car and if the addition of the TRD sway bar will help with this. I wouldn't mind a little flatter cornering along with more precise highway handling. My sister owns a 2013 Prius with 15 inch wheels and says hers doesn't wander like mine does. any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Thank you!

 

thank you and thanks for the reply! it seems to start the wandering anywhere from 65 to 75 maybe. Somewhere in that range.I'm running my tire pressure at 35 - 37.

What kind of suspension work? You mean like tie rods or ball joints? my nephew was a Toyota engineer and I got this car through him. It was an employee lease turn in vehicle and they have to be maintained religiously in order for the employees to keep the lease so I feel like the car was maintained very well.

 

I actually usually do on my own work but I'm just wondering if these are normal traits for the car before I start searching for problems up underneath it. I guess that is the next step and I'll check out other threads like you suggest. Thanks for the help!

 

We have a highway here with heavy rain grooves and the car pulled like crazy on it for awhile after having the new tires installed. It's not as bad now, but it still pulls with the grooves to a degree that I feel is a little abnormal. Never had a passenger car tire do that before. Even my 4Runner with it's oversized AT tires doesn't pull anywhere near that bad! Is it the tires on the Prius, or is it some other culprit? I didn't get an alignment done when I got the new tires since it was tracking straight with the old tires. In hind sight, it probably should've been done just to be safe. I guess that's what I'll try next after I have a look up underneath.

So, do you guys pretty much across the board run your tire pressure higher than what Toyota recommends for the car? If so, why, and what pressure do you recommend?

 

Wow, great article. I've always prescribed to the concerns of running over-inflated tires, but the info in that post makes sense. I do notice that when I've increased tire pressure when on road trips with a loaded down car or truck that it seems to drive better all the way around. I guess I'll try upping the pressure today and see what happens. Go all the way up to the max on the sidewall, huh?

 

Thanks Jim. Sorry for the late reply, as I haven't been back on here since last posting. I upped my tire pressure to 40 psi, per recommendation of a Toyota dealership that has a lot of good videos on these, and it made a pretty big difference.

I had the car aligned recently at a Goodyear dealership across the street from where I work and they told me to never inflate the tires over what the manufacturer recommends and that all the hype on the forums was bad information. They had deflated them to stock pressure and the handling went back to where it had been. I put them back up to 40 psi and the car handles and drives a lot better and I can tell fuel mileage has improved a bit, too.