Really need your help: steering

[jonessmc87]

ok here's the patient:


She's my DD up here at school. This may be a long winded post but i'm going to do the best i can to try and describe what its doing. So lets go back 2 weeks; im on the highway doing about 70-75 and i notice that i need to correct the steering a little more than usual. not a big deal just annoying. It was the first time the the truck had been on the highway in over a month so i figured it was a product of the worn front tires. i leave town for 5 days and then go get in the truck to go to work. now i have to correct it at lower speeds 5mph-30mph, but above 30mph its fine. This was frustrating me so i went through and inspected everything. It all seemed relatively tight. I needed to fix it so i started throwing parts at it. put a new steering stabilizer on it, new front tie rod (both ends), new steering box. All of this didn't do a damn thing to help the problem. so i limped it to work trying to keep her in the lines until last friday morning when i drove it the 6 hours back home for easter. It behaved fine on the highway both ways. I got back to school sunday night. yesterday morning i get in the truck to go to work and the wandering is so bad at any speed I'm afraid i'll hit someone in the lane next to me. so i had the girlfriend drive me to work today in her brand new car lol.

now to describe the wandering. you're going down the road and the truck has the normal 20 year old truck wandering to it, so i go to put a little correction in it and i turn the wheel and feel the normal "something is about to happen" tension, but there is no movement, so i move it a little more then all of a sudden it feels like something "cams over" and the steering snaps too far in the direction i want to go. now i gotta quickly correct the wheel and i feel that same normal tension, then it snaps back that way. As you can guess, this starts quite the oscillation back and forth and at 40 - 50 mph im in the cab swatting flys and sweating bullets trying to correct it fast enough to keep it in the lines.

maybe its something super stupid im over looking. If anybody is in the rochester NY area and wants to come drive it (not to play with the nv4500 but to help me fix this steering lol) the offer is out there.

tonight im putting a new drag link on it and im going to swap 2 rear tires to the front because they are nice and square. If swapping the tires helps thats cool, but its still only covering up the real problem at hand.

So come on guys lets hear any and all random stupid suggestions and stories. I need to get this thing driveable. Thanks.