CLUNK!

[LA350]

Hey there everyone! I have another noise this one is coming from the front end. Starting off after being parked for a while I will get a CLUNK followed by what feels like a drag of the brakes. I look at the the components and do not see anything that jumps out to me. The brake drag seems to go away after a stop.

I am thinking it must be my ball joints as the pass. side tire is wearing unevenly-outside of tire is losing tread pretty fast. I am hoping it is the ball joints or somethings easier to fix. I really cannot afford to spend big $$ right now. I am going to revert back to driving my S10 until I fix it.

 

[RLDSL]

Need to get the thing up on jack stands and shake the front end parts around until you find the culprit. You may need to use a pry bar. Take a good look at the axle pivot bushings

 

[LA350]

Well I couldn't get it up on the jack but managed to do some investigation. i found that the steering dampner was pretty loose, so I put a wrench to it. Also, the bushings look pretty shot. The passenger side rod end would shift a fair amount with pressure applied, infact the whole assembly would shift fore and aft. The bushings look pretty dry. I guess this is where i will have to start.

It is pretty evident this is the source of the clunking and likely the cause of my shake/tire wear.

I will price the parts tomorrow AM. Are these difficult to replace? I do not have any front end experience.

 

[RLDSL]

Bushings can be a chore. ends aren't too bad with a pickle fork in hand. I recently replaced all my tie rod ends , rods, adjuster sleeves, damper, etc, got the whole works from www.rockauto.com pretty cheap. not to mention it's easier to replace the whole works and only have to remove a few old tight points. between that and the axle pivot bushings that were not much left but shells, that took a massive amount of slop out of the steering.

 

[LA350]

I finally managed to replace my tie rods. I had a ***** of a time getting the right parts. I was living w/ the vibration until I got the money and parts right, but after a while things got pretty bad and had to take the truck off the road for safety sake.

After getting the run around for the correct parts and driving all over town 2 times exchanging parts i finally installed everything. I still need to replace the driver side tie rod and end. I have the rod end but need to save up for the tie rod. I chose the Moog parts for the quality but $$$!

I drove it about a few on Sunday to test it and while there is no more hard pull to the right anymore (I can pretty much drive in a straight line hand free), it is wandering to the left a bit. 100% better improvement though. So I took it to work- 70 mile round trip. Well, everything was ok going but returning the shaking started again. I am guessing the driver-side is the culprit. It seemed tight but I am sure it is shot too.

I parked it again. Mainly for safety, but the last time I chewed up the passenger-side tire so bad I had to swap it out. 130 for a tire that was basically in new condition is now shot because I wanted to keep driving the truck. I want to move to a larger tire, but $$! So I shot myself in the foot a bit. So I parked it to save the tires.

I hope to resolve the shaking. If it doesn't fix it what are some other things I may have to look at? Camping season is right around the corner so I need to get it road worthy.

Thanks!!

 

[7.3shrk]

Check the balance on the tires. I replaces a lot of my suspension parts when I had the shaking and assumed it was them, but it would return soon after. I did not check the tires (even though some of the guys said they were the cause). I replaced them finally, and the shaking was gone. I do not even have a steering stabilizer on there (I took it off thinking it might be the problem).

 

[RLDSL]

and don't forget to get an allignment after swaping out front end parts. IT's all out of whack now. If it wasn't shaking right when you put tha parts on, but it started shaking after a while, chances are the allignment is off quite a bit and you scuffed the tires enough on that little run to throw at least one of them out of balance, so, allignment, balance.

 

[LA350]

Ok, thanks! I will get it in the shop once I replace the driver's side.