Road wander

[dennislbrooks]

My k10 has a little bit of road wander and am wondering what is acceptable in these straight front axle 4wds. I run a gm 10 bolt out of an 88 blazer with all new suspension parts and even changed out the power steering gear. All my connections are tight. It has a new rag joint in the steering on a van tilt. I run the stock 67 custom steering wheel. Not sure where to look now. Maybe the steering gear preload? Does this front axle require angle shims on the perches? I do not remember my 78 k10 way back wandering as much.
thanks

['63GENIII]

I think much of the wandering can be caused by improper alignment. Mine wanders a lot as well. Bad ball joints and a worn out drivers side knuckle as well has kept mine from being aligned right for some time. On mine, the castor or kingpin (forgive me if I'm using the wrong terms) is off. I am going to be removing shims that I installed to try to get the driveline angle right.

[B. W.]

X2 on alignment. My DD is a 79 3/4 ton with no sway bar (removed for plow) it tracks like a train at 70 on bad roads.

[mike16]

did it do it before? could be a defective tire. switch them around. even new tires can be defective. Also check the rim for bent condition. anything over 1/16th can be felt.

how tight is your steering box? there are i think two preload adjustments on the box itself.

most people do the one , too much and it seems the box tightens up but there is a second adjustment that gets neglected.

Jack up your front axle, completely off the ground and check for any slop in each component in the system. a little slop here and a little slop there adds up by the time it gets to either the steering wheel or the road wheel

a little slop in the axle gets exagerated out at the wheel.

[dennislbrooks]

I will put it on the lift next week and begin investigating. The other adjustment for the steering box is at the bottom end I think - will look on web for adjustment procedure. I will not adjust it unless nothing else appears. I am fine tuning this truck now as it has all the modifications I want. As far as switching tires around, that is a lttle tougher --- I can only change the fronts to fronts and rears to rear unless I use my 2006 rims with spacers ------maybe.

Thanks for the responses and I will report back what I find. I had the truck front end aligned before and all they did was adjust the toe-in. The truck tracks straight so I do not think I have a rear end alignnment problem.

[dennislbrooks]

With the help of my wife, I found the problem. The tie rod end on the draglink into the pitman arm was slightly loose. I could see it give when she turned the steering wheel side to side with tires on the ground and not running. I tightened it, test drove it. Problem gone.

Thanks guys.

[Sweeet67]

Thank goodness for wife helpers eh? Mines always there to help out as well!

[mike16]

congratulations on the fix.

I just wanted to add another possibility for the wandering front end question

I discovered that if you have two identical tire and wheel set up, and you inflate the tire pressure to identical PSI pressure. your tires may end up being different diameters!!! and that means they are of different circumfrence's. the distance around the outside of the tire.

you can meassure the circumfrance of each tire with a tape measure to see if they are of same or different diameters.

there are two ways to solve this problem,

one is to try to increse or decrese the pressure in each tire untill they are both of the same diameter

the other , used in racing, is the inflate each tire to the same pressure the take the one that is larger in diameter , put it on a machine that shaves tire rubber off the tread and have the machine turn down that larger tire to the same diameter as the smaller tire

it works well on expensive hi quality racing tires, but cheepo tires.... your going to leave alot of rubber on the ground.

either solution has its advantages and disadvantages, but cheep azz tires will do that

better to buy good reputable quality tires.