About three weeks ago I noticed my truck was getting harder to keep in a straight line. I replaced the track bar back in the summer. The steering is still responsive, not much play in the wheel but it seams to grab the dips in the road and it gets pulled all over the lane. Im not sure if its just a steering stabalizer or if its the steering gear box its self. If anyone has any ideas id love to hear them.

Thanks, Matt

 

Sound to me like your ball joints or something else in the front end has gone bad. I know the feeling your talking about, it's pretty scary when you have to stop in those grooves. I've had two trucks do what your talking about and once I replaced the ball joints it all went away in both.

 

Sounds like a normal second gen! lol. Any tire changes or anything? I put a dss steering stab. on my truck and it helped out alot. should have come on these trucks stock!But like smokem says check out your balljoints and other frontend stuff first.

 

I ended up rebuilding my whole front end with good parts, Moog, Thuren, DSS etc. The best help was getting a good alignment tho. Make sure your guy sets it to the specs, not just 'within' the specs. Search "wheel alignment specs" for the specs in here.

Kurt

 

I checked the ball joints when I put the new tires on it and they didnt have any play in them. I really hope I dont have to put more money into this thing so soon, in the last three weeks I put a little over $1500 into it. I guess I'll start with the steering stabalizer and if that dont fix it the next thing I buy for it might be a "For Sale" sign

 

I put bigger tires on mine, only 265's but my truck was all over the place. I installed the same tire but in 245's that the truck came stock with and the problem was gone. Conclusion??? Who knows? But I do know the stock size is going back on.

 

Mine started doing it with my old tires and it seemed about the same with the new tires. Im going to put a steering stabalizer on it right now and go from there I guess

 

I had a pitman arm & idler go out on mine. Fortunetly it was caught prior to it failing! If it fails you have no steering left. Mine was found to be "hand tight." That was three years ago, and it's feeling a bit loosey-goosey again, so I may need to check it out again. Also the ball joints had been replaced less than a month before this happened, and the pitman arm was never noted as a problem at that time.

 

hi
your track bar may be bad agin !
replace it with the 3rd gen upgrade
it will be the first thing i do agin if i buy another 2nd gen .

 

It's usually a combination of things. Bad design first, then various worn parts. Read the other post about the quick ratio steering boxes- that is part of the equation, too. I doubt if just putting on a steering stabilizer will do the trick.
And, the larger the tire, the more leverage imposed, so the more pronounced the problem and the quicker that parts wear.
You may also look into the steering box braces. That seems to help a lot of folks. Being financially challenged (whic also says, what am I doing with an expensive diesel?), I haven't put one on my truck yet, but it is on the list.