imbodie

Ok, I had a trip coming up and had to have new front tires. After the new tires I dropped truck off at a local shop (had used them before) for an alignment. The shop said I needed all new ball joints (reasonable, had one shop tell me same thing, another shop said I didn't need new balljoints).

SO I let them do the front end work....

NOW I have loose steering.... and I had pretty tight steering before they did the work..... ALL NEW ball joints (moog) got severely overcharged for the ball joints but thats my mistake... new trackbar, new shocks, new steering stabilizer. They also replaced both wheel bearings and rotors for the brakes....

WHY is my steering loose NOW????

-Tim
ps I did the trackbar, shocks and steering stabilizer myself

dozer12216

WHY is my steering loose NOW????

Because you took to someone more intrested in selling parts than quality of repair. JMHO of course. I call it the shotgun sales pitch, and you had the opportunity to inspect and verify need, I assume.

floodlight

I would take a good look at the alignment sheet to see what specs they aligned the truck to.

sjester

Make sure everything is still tight. Last time someone worked on my front end I had to go back and retorque in several places. Maybe retorque the trackbar first?

J BODY

Good info! 4x4 2500/3500 like the max toe in spec. Worked wonders on mine. I'm at 117k with original ball joints on my 01 4x4. Some up/down movement, but well within spec and NO side/side movement which can cause drift/wander.


So what is your description of "loose" steering? Wander?? Drift??

Fern

Lets see the itemized list if you don't mind. I've gotten some quotes so far and my jaw dropped (I need the complete front end rebuild also). After some research I found some better alternatives.Thuren fab, and DSS are two of the companies I plan on using.

Junk Man

If by loose, you mean that it wanders then you may not have enough caster. It needs to be above 3.5 degrees. There are threads discussing how to adjust it by trial and error. If loose means the steering wheel turns and the road wheels don't, you have a problem & have to determine what part has the play.

GFB

Alignment on these trucks should always be set to max caster.

imbodie

I didn't get any thing like an alignment sheet.... this is the first alignment I've EVER had done on a vehicle... being a week later, do you think I can still get this info?
-Tim

Junk Man

They may have printed a hard copy of the specs. I bought a lifetime from Firestone. You have to watch them adjust to your specs. In the 5 times my truck has been on the machine (1 independent shop & 4 different firestone) the ONLY time the tech adjusted the caster ecentrics was when I stood there & told him to do it. He didn't like the customer telling him anything (I started off nice) but he did add caster. I need some more & will measure control arm length with a tape, adjust, drive, readjust then have a shop set toe (again). $140 for unlimited alignments. Firestone isn't gonna make $$ with deals like that.

Fueling around

Take it back to the shop. There must be at least a 30 day warranty on any service.

Did you figure what is loose per junkman's description?
I've learned that when you do ball joints to replace everything that moves which means another $300 for parts on the steering linkage.

imbodie

Ok... its not a lot, but is aprox 1/8 play in the steering wheel before the wheels turn. The play was NOT there prior to the front end work. They offered to adjust it for me, but I'm afraid of them messing more stuff up than fixing the play in the steering. There doesn't appear to be loose components in the steering linkage.
-Tim

gomopar440

I'm going through the same problem right now. My 01 Ram 2500 4X4 just had new upper and lower ball joints, new drag link, new tie rod (@ pittman arm) and a new steering stabilizer installed. They checked everything else out with me watching closely and there is no unwanted movement in any of the other front end parts. Before I took the truck in, I had a bad case of Death Wobble any time I took it over 70 mph (sometimes less too). Now it's stable and smooth, as far as the vibration goes, but when driving straight it wants to wander to the left or right constantly. I have to counter the drift with steering input to keep from changing lanes.

The alignment shop has been working on it for three days now and they don't seem to know how to correct the problem. They keep asking me what to do... Uhhh, shouldn't THEY be the ones to tell me what needs to be done? Maybe it's my fault. When I brought it in to them, I had done my homework and researched the DW problem all over the internet. I came to the conclusion I needed to to get everything loose in the front end back into spec with quality parts (Moog) and get the caster set to about 3.5 positive. After the new parts were installed I asked the tech to put set Caster at pos 3.5, citing the web resource as my main reference. When I took it out for the test drive it was all over the place. We tried moving the caster back down to where it was before the alignment (pos 1.75) and adjusting the toe inward a bit (didn't get the exact spec, but it's not at zero). Thats where it's at right now, and while it's a little better, it still wants to drift to the left or right while I'm holding the wheel straight.

Now the shop wants me to research a solution to get this remedied and bring the truck back to them so they can try out any ideas I find. I'm scheduled to bring it back in Monday afternoon so I've got about a day and a half to figure this out. I suppose I should be thankful that they are willing to try whatever ideas I throw at them to fix it. Some places would just stick to the "it's in spec" answer and push you out the door.

Maybe I just need to have the grey haired old codger that aligned Noah's ark and understands this stuff like the back of his hand and have him have a crack at it?

torquefan

Quite often, after new ball joints, the steering feels like it "wanders", and the driver will describe it as feeling "loose", but it really isn't. The problem may be that the new ball joints and other components have made the steering so tight that it won't find center by itself, especially after going around a corner. It will give the sensation that the truck always needs steering input, instead of before, when after a steering input, you could relax your grip on the wheel and it would return to center on its own, requiring only small corrections from the driver.

The ball joints are pretty fussy about installation and require a certain torque sequence to allow them to work without binding or being excessively tight, especially when brand new. Even when torqued exactly to spec, sometimes they will give this tight sensation for awhile when driving. Breaking them loose, then retorquing sometimes helps, sometimes not. Driving for awhile to "break them in" is probably a better solution. I've found that aftermarket joints contribute to this condition more than OEM do. I've said before, ball joints have a wear spec, and perfectly tight joints aren't always necessarily better than joints with a small amount of play. I should add that pushing your caster to the maximum you can achieve isn't necessarily better than being within spec. Have a look at a shopping cart where someone has bent a front wheel mount, effectively giving it too much caster. That wheel will be flopping all over, instead of tracking straight. Too much isn't always better, otherwise they'd all be coming from the factory with ten degrees of caster.

Brendan

To Carry on with steering discussion, I had play in the steering wheel of my 94', I could turn the wheel and the shaft would rotate into the box but there was a delay before the pitman arm would rotate. All the shops I went to told me I needed a new steering box, so I did the research and bought the best box available in British Columbia from a place called steering solutions. The steering feels better now, but I still have that play in the steering wheel. So the question is, after putting a new box in why does the shaft input and output still appear to have a delay? Sorry for stealing the thread but I felt that we are working on the same thing!

Thanks