Wednesday, June 23, 2010

No more drunk driving!

So a few months back I detailed how the truck was pretty much driving like "keg" drunk because of drivers side ball joints etc...
I replaced those parts and reduced it to "12 pack drunk" which was a nice improvement but still not enough.
In the meantime I drove to Susanville, Dixon, and various points between and the sloppy steering was not only hard to drive but embarrassing and I noticed front tire wear in excess of rear tire wear... all in a little over 1,000 miles! $$$$OUCH$$$$

So I took it to the local tire place where they threw it up on the rack and proceeded to show me all the parts that needed replacement... pretty much the entire steering assembly except for the box and the spindles. After pricing it and despite FABULOUS service from BJ's Offroad, the wallet has been stretched thin and I had to go with the standby-rockauto.com

For all the same part numbers-Kragen was $380, BJ's was $310, and rockauto was $234 delivered(including a steering box rebuild kit)
Boxes came yesterday and today and I ripped out the old parts and swapped in the new ones.

It took about 4 hours including a trip to OSH and taco truck and gathering and measuring...
Most of the problem was DPO must have done something to steering as there was a washer missing on the pitman arm allowing it to flop about. Luckily it didnt damage the splines and I was able to get a big fat washer at OSH to allow the nut to fully tighten.
Center hole on this bad boy is 1 1/8"

I will have to go get an alignment since I didnt get everything exact but it only pulls slightly to the right and even still I can take my hands off the wheel!
SUCCESS!

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