Steering Issue

[Longbed68]

I had a post a while back about replacing the worm in the steering gear, which is what the owner of this truck I'm doing thought needed done. I was told that if there's free play noticed in the steering wheel side to side, up and down, and/or in and out then there's wear and it the box would need adjusted or rebuilt. Now I'm further along and it seems the issue isn't any of those - the wheels is pretty rock solid. The issue is actually that there's a lot of freeplay in the wheel movement itself, requiring a 1/4 to 1/2 turn of the steering wheel before the front wheels respond. What would the issue here be? Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Dan