Weird Steering Symptoms - Diesel Forum

senix · 10-24-2009, 08:42 AM

This morning I took a load of stuff to the dump. On the road there is construction and I missed one of the warning signs for a big drop off. I was traveling maybe 35 mph. This drop off was sharp enough that the front suspension hit the bumps stops.

This is a 4x4. So now my steering feels weird. Everything seems to be solid. nothing hit the pavement, only the bump stops show that they touched. Seems to drive down the right straight as always so I don't think it is an alignment issue.

Seems like when you turn the wheels that it is not smooth.
Any ideas?

ZeroOne · 10-24-2009, 10:58 AM

So you're saying, when you turn the wheel, its more coarse as it steers as felt through the steering wheel?

Seems like the only thing that would be effected are the tie rod ends on the drag link (the bar that goes from the pitman arm to the passenger side knucle). The ends of the tie-rod go knucle to knucle so they wouldn't have felt much, and the ball joints shouldn't have been phased by it. Same for the radius arms.

Maybe crawl under and twist on the drag link to make sure its not in a wierd position? (You can rotate the bar a few degrees because of the ball-in-socket type of TRE's on either end.) It should be free, and in the center of that range of play, if that makes any sense. It could be rotated all the way in one direction on the TRE's because of the drop/bump.

senix · 10-24-2009, 11:00 AM

good suggestion I didn't look up there to check that.