My girlfriends 1990 Silverado is making a bad clunking sound when we turn the wheel

[Steve's Chevy]

My steering shaft on my 97 has the same play in it and it has a new rag joint and gearbox.... the clunk could be anything from tie rods, idler,pitman, balljoints, wheel bearings ect ect..... need to narrow down where it's coming from?

 

[7echo]

Check the sway bar end links and sway bar bushings.

 

[magimerlin]

Crawl under the front and have her turn the steering wheel back and forth. The sound is loud enough that something is very loose so you should see it easily..

sent from what use to be a great country...

 

[magimerlin]

If you lived closer I'd tell yah to bring it to my shop.. a quick check of the front end is free....

sent from what use to be a great country...

 

[LSUfan71]

I'd think twice about doing this, especially if you're running headers. There have been some failures of those Jeep shafts on these trucks.

http://www.gmt400.com/forum/showthread.php?12087-XJ-Steering-Shaft-Upgrade-%2888-96-Trucks%29/page28

'Some'? Never heard of such a thing, link? Anyway, I'd wager that ragged-out GM rag joints outnumber failed Jeep shafts 1000-1.

 

[LSUfan71]

My steering shaft on my 97 has the same play in it and it has a new rag joint and gearbox.... the clunk could be anything from tie rods, idler,pitman, balljoints, wheel bearings ect ect..... need to narrow down where it's coming from?

I had a broken pitman arm that took forever to diagnose until I got under the truck and watched everything while someone else worked the steering wheel.

The pitman arm balljoint connection to the center link was broken inside the pitman arm and it's next to difficult to spot (at least for me and my lack of experience at that time).

Have you check power steering fluid? Can't recall if that was mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

[mistaake]

Unbiased third party here... is the XJ shaft safe or unsafe? I would love reassurances that I'm not going to end up wrecking my truck and possibly injuring or killing somebody when the steering shaft fails.

 

[7echo]

Unbiased third party here... is the XJ shaft safe or unsafe? I would love reassurances that I'm not going to end up wrecking my truck and possibly injuring or killing somebody when the steering shaft fails.

I have read the threads where guys have commented about the issue. Some guys have no problem. Some have reported that with headers the shaft is too close and over heats. Search around, there are comments on the steering mechanism on these trucks, just takes some digging. I might do it to mine after some more looking, I have a stock 305.

Unfortunately there isn't a large sample study, just anecdotal evidence. I would err on the side of safety.

 

[DRAGGIN95]

Thread cleaned up, keep the arguing back and forth off of here, if it is not helpful to the post then don't comment.

 

[LSUfan71]

The comments on that suggest a bad cv joint, but on her Silverado 2wd, she doesn't have that

Any luck resolving this yet? Bad sway bar links? I solved a similar noise in my '94 caused by bad sway bar link bushings.