Really need your help: steering

[jonessmc87]

ok here's the patient:


She's my DD up here at school. This may be a long winded post but i'm going to do the best i can to try and describe what its doing. So lets go back 2 weeks; im on the highway doing about 70-75 and i notice that i need to correct the steering a little more than usual. not a big deal just annoying. It was the first time the the truck had been on the highway in over a month so i figured it was a product of the worn front tires. i leave town for 5 days and then go get in the truck to go to work. now i have to correct it at lower speeds 5mph-30mph, but above 30mph its fine. This was frustrating me so i went through and inspected everything. It all seemed relatively tight. I needed to fix it so i started throwing parts at it. put a new steering stabilizer on it, new front tie rod (both ends), new steering box. All of this didn't do a damn thing to help the problem. so i limped it to work trying to keep her in the lines until last friday morning when i drove it the 6 hours back home for easter. It behaved fine on the highway both ways. I got back to school sunday night. yesterday morning i get in the truck to go to work and the wandering is so bad at any speed I'm afraid i'll hit someone in the lane next to me. so i had the girlfriend drive me to work today in her brand new car lol.

now to describe the wandering. you're going down the road and the truck has the normal 20 year old truck wandering to it, so i go to put a little correction in it and i turn the wheel and feel the normal "something is about to happen" tension, but there is no movement, so i move it a little more then all of a sudden it feels like something "cams over" and the steering snaps too far in the direction i want to go. now i gotta quickly correct the wheel and i feel that same normal tension, then it snaps back that way. As you can guess, this starts quite the oscillation back and forth and at 40 - 50 mph im in the cab swatting flys and sweating bullets trying to correct it fast enough to keep it in the lines.

maybe its something super stupid im over looking. If anybody is in the rochester NY area and wants to come drive it (not to play with the nv4500 but to help me fix this steering lol) the offer is out there.

tonight im putting a new drag link on it and im going to swap 2 rear tires to the front because they are nice and square. If swapping the tires helps thats cool, but its still only covering up the real problem at hand.

So come on guys lets hear any and all random stupid suggestions and stories. I need to get this thing driveable. Thanks.

[tucsonjwt]

Have you lifted the front end off the ground and moved the wheels top to bottom, front to back to check the bearings? If everything is good under the hood, then I would look from the rag joint back up to the steering wheel. Steering columns can wear out, but I don't know how you would test them. I had my upper column rebuilt because of an electrical problem causing intermittent hard start and it was not cheap, and even buying a new column and installing or rebuilding it yourself cost some $$. So, I would try to contact a suspension/steering shop and ask them if they can diagnose a bad steering column and how much the diagnosis would cost. Every time I pull off a steering wheel something bad happens, so I leave that to the pros.

[lindstromjd]

My vote goes for a bad steering column rag joint. I replaced mine with a solid joint because I've had 2 of the poly ones fail on me at low speeds, and it scared the crap out of me then. Solid ones are just better, in my opinion.

[jonessmc87]

http://chevytruckworld.tenmagazines.....asp?id=203745 this guy describes it fairly well

[jonessmc87]

left front axle u-joint was the culprit. i checked it last week and thought it was fine. I learned an important lesson: when checking an axle u joint make sure u can spin it a full 360 degrees, dont just do 90 and call it good. well at least I have all new steering components. this things drives great lol

[Adam j]

Do you still have the 89 crew cab for sale
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[hartbraker]

I had this very same issue in my truck. MOST ANNOYING THING IN THE WORLD! Mine wasn't as bad as the issues you described but had similar issues that seemed to be most noticeable while turning! Crazy what those u-joints can cause in the steering.

Glad you got it fixed, but did the guy who told you what the problem was teach you how to check them for future reference?

With the front tires off the ground, turn the tires so that the u-joints are perfectly straight up and down (make a cross so that the + is level or perpendicular to the ground). Once at this point try to manually turn the tire. If you can, rotate the tire so that the other end of the u-joint is straight up in the air. Repeat trying to turn the tire manually. If unsuccessful in turning the tire either time.... the u-joints need replaced! Hope that description was helpful!