Steering wander

[dirtautoguy]

That sounds pretty similar to what I got going on. But I do not feel the steering wheel pull or move.

I really believe what I have going on is because of the pitman arm not fitting on the gear box shaft tight. If I didn’t watch the shaft while my wife moved the steering wheel I wouldn’t have known what was going on.

I talked to the owner of the napa parts store and he got out 2 different pitman arms and put a caliper on them. The one I got was ten thousandths of an inch bigger than the other one he had. I took the slightly smaller one and will be putting it on hopefully tomorrow to see if that helps.

His other theory was the gear box shaft is worn so the Pitman arm doesn’t fit the splines right.

It’s really hard to get that but tight with a *****. I used a air impact on it which works great.

The other night when I took the nut off I was able to get a wrench on it with everything still in the truck and was also able to wrench it back down. So if you have a wrench but not a impact that might be a option too.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I looked at Haynes and the Pitman arm has to be torqued to 184lb.ft. Not sure I can do that! Or remove it even if it's torqued to that.

You just need a longer cheater pipe. I have a 2' piece of 3/4" conduit I can slide over the end of my breaker bar, and another 2' piece of 1" conduit I can slide over that if needed. If that doesn't break it loose, I have a 6' piece of .120" wall tubing.

 

[Pinger]

You just need a longer cheater pipe. I have a 2' piece of 3/4" conduit I can slide over the end of my breaker bar, and another 2' piece of 1" conduit I can slide over that if needed. If that doesn't break it loose, I have a 6' piece of .120" wall tubing.

That was my first thought - until I realised there's no room to swing it.
Impact gun - if there's room - or remove it.

What about the joint above it though - splined or D coupling?

 

[Supercharged111]

If it's 2wd just spin the nut off the box and look and see if the pitman arm is splined correctly.

 

[dirtautoguy]

I got the new pitman arm on and it fits much tighter than the other one. I didn’t even have to tap the old one to get it off it just fell off....

My truck still wanders some but it takes a lot less steering wheel to correct it.

Although driving to work today it feels maybe looser from the first day so I’m going to check and make sure nothing is backing off

The rest of the wander I’m going to contribute to the slightly loose inner tie rod and alignment. It doesn’t seem to be wearing my tires bad and I’m out of money for the project right now but in the next month I hope to get the rest done.

 

[dirtautoguy]

I finally got around to redoing the tie rods. The driver side were still pretty solid but the passenger side were pretty toast. I replaced both and had it alligned at a different shop. They still didn’t give me any specs on the alignment but they did give me a ride to work AND bring my truck back to me after it was done I was very impressed...... I used mevotech Ttx inner and outer tie rods with new ACDelco adjuster sleeves. The tie rods are a lot more heavy duty than the old ones.

my truck drives a million times better than it has in a long time, I’m not running a lumber mill just driving to work any more.

thanks for everyone’s help

 

[Rick Reid]

I thought I had brake problems, truck would go down the road pretty good, until I'd press the brake peddle then the truck would pull to the left bad. Went in and did a brake job, still same thing. I figured a 30 year old gear box might be the problem, worked at a salvage so I got a "good" used low mileage gear box, still had pull, adjusted the screw on the gearbox, still had the pull. Was looking on Youtube to see what they were doing in there, someone said the ragjoints, so then I looked into wht they were doing for those, ran across a video were a guy had changed over to a shaft with ujoints instead of rags joints, that took the play out of my steering wheel but still had the pull. Was laying under the truck wiggling everything when I came to a clunky inner tierod end, took it off the the durn thing just about fell apart in my hand, checked it over and found a hole for a zerx fitting but no fitting, same thing in the other side, both outer ones were fine. Replaced the 2 inner and not it goes down the road straight with out have to keep the wheels turned and when braking there's no more pull !!!