Sloppy Steering - Where to start?

[CB]

My '00 (Details below) has 138K miles and the steering is starting to loosen up. It's not really bad like an old caddy or anything, but I miss the nearly sports-car tightness that my truck had when it was new. I guess that there is about 20 degrees of play. Am I looking at Ball joints or are there other things involved here too? I want to fix it right and I don't want to fix anything that is not broken.

Chris

[Going_Going_Gone]

Here's some shadetree suggestions: raise one front wheel at a time so that the wheel hangs free...place a long pry bar below the tire, pry straight up...if the tire/wheel moves at all or makes noise it could be either wheel bearings or balljoint(s). You can crawl underneath and watch what part(s) move and determine where the problem is. Another thing to do is to lie down under the front end and have someone turn the steering wheel alternately left and right and see/feel if any of the tie rod ends have give in them. Or you could take a huge pair of channel lock pliers (if you have them) and squeeze the tie rod ends and look for slop there. If you aren't very handy, bearings and ball joints are something you'd best not try to replace. However, if you only have to replace tie rod ends, usually by counting the number of exposed threads and installing the new parts with the same number of threads showing, your settings will be close enough to drive the truck to an alignment shop to have it set up properly.