alpinecrick
I'm Awesome
So my thought behind not going to a u joint and just replacing it with new rubber. Since I drive to my almost every weekend and that’s a 3 hour drive on Michigan roads. I don’t want it being overly sensitive feeling in my steering wheel. Plus having larger 32x11.5r15 tires that will feel a lot more in the road.
Plus a new rag joint is under $20 and can come back and fab a u joint in later if I don’t like the rag joint and spend the $100 for a flaming River one.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Matad,
I have a 96 K1500 ECSB with the Z71 option that has been in the family since new. On occasion I drove that truck and it's steering was excellent. The feel was perfectly heavy, returned to center, held a curve on our two lane mountain highways--it steered better than my 91 Light Duty K2500 ECSB that I bought with 10K on it. The 96 had LT245 tires on it for most of it's life.
By the time I took the truck over at 155k the steering wasn't nearly as good (nothing in the steering had ever been replaced), and it has been an adventure (and not cheap) trying to regain that original steering in this truck. Among every other part remotely related to steering I replaced the rag joint. I even clamped a BIG vise grip to the shaft below the rag joint and had a buddy turn the steering wheel with a little grunt on it with the engine running with the vise grip against the frame and I could not see any movement in the new rag joint.
In other words I'm a bit skeptical of the blame the rag joint is getting in these trucks.
The GMT400's were designed with 245 tires, and any tire larger seems to make them less precise. I run LT265 10ply on all three of my 1500's and my 2500. I have a 01 Sierra 1500 4wd ECSB that I bought with 32K on it about 7 years ago (that's not a typo). It still had the original XL245 OEM tires on it. It was "nervous" when driving on the road, and a small pothole felt like it was falling into the Grand Canyon. At about the 42K mark I put LT265 10 ply tires on it and it rolled MUCH smoother. But it didn't steer quite as precise.
It has been my observation going to bigger tires, steering issues become more of a challenge. Plus bigger tires wear out steering parts a LOT faster--BTDT.