chrisl757

Thank you very much. I appreciate the encouragement.

I just spent more time under the Jeep. Jacked the front end up and checked both ends for ball joint play.

The driver side upper ball joint has a slight up and down movement and click when I wedged a 2 by 4 under the wheel and pushed up. The total range of motion is maybe 1/16 of an inch.

Could that be enough to cause all of this trouble?

SirLips

YEP, thats about how much mine moved up and down, it also had play in it when the wheel was turned back and forth. What your looking for is A) does it move right away, when the wheel starts turning, or is there "Play in it". B) if you turn the wheel a small bit left and right, enough to just make the tire move, does the joint stay in place or does it turn to? if not, its bad.


From what your saying i would think this is exactly the issue, but, dont drop $62 at NAPA without asking a nice mechanic to make sure. Just tell him you see a bad joint, and want to double check it beofr ebuying it. If you dont have a bad attitude or a rat tatooed on your face, im sure you will find a guy to peek at it.

(If you do have said "rat" tattooed on your face, post us a picture, then go find a mechanic anyway.)

chrisl757

I should be clear about this.

The ball joint that I noticed that has up/down movement is the ball joint on the steering knuckle.

I checked for any travel/movement on the ends of the track bar, and they are TIGHT. I put it on jacks, and pushed the front end up/down, and they didn't show anything loose.

I know the ball joints on the steering knuckle can cause problems, but I don't know if they would cause these vibrations.

chrisl757

Hi all,
Last night I went to AutoZone to get new ball joints for the driver side. The manager spent 20 minutes talking to me, and he didn't think what I have could be coming from a ball joint, and he said that a 2 X 4 would put a lot more pressure than a pry bar, so that might explain a tiny movement on the ball joint.

I explained the vibrations and the steering wheel left/right wiggle when I went over bumps.

He thought it might be the steering box. He told me to loosen a bolt to undo the link between the steering shaft and box. If I could get the stub going into the box to have play, it might be a bad steering box.

I can't find that bolt!

But I did feel a lot of free play with the steering shaft with the engine off.

Somebody else on youtube has a video that looks like mine:


Does this look like a bad steering box?

SirLips

Sorry bud, I am learning as i go, and i have not broken the steering box...yet...so i am going to be exactly ZERO help on that.

Radi

You need to put one hand on the steering box input shaft and the other on the output (pitman arm). Turn the input shaft left and right. If the input shaft moves without a corresponding movement at the pitman, the box is worn.

That isn't likely to cause an up/down steering wheel vibration but might cause some left/right particularly over bumps. Pretty much anything loose could cause some left/right wander as could a bad alignment. Up/down at a certain speed range could be tires out of balance, bent rim, that sort of thing.

chrisl757

Hi all,
Thanks to everyone for their help.

I took it in to the shop and what a difference it makes to get it up on a lift.

My driver side ball joints do have movement (much easier to see on the lift.)

My control arms are spongy (again much easier to see on lift).

Those two combined are probably my problem. The control arms in particular look "ok" and I pryed them to see if they were going back to center (they did). but when they had it up on a lift, he showed me how soft they were, and because they are so soft (spongy) they are giving too much.

In fact, when he used a pry bar to push the control arms, the whole wheel moved laterally.

I paid for the diagnostics, and I'll order MOOG control arms from Rock Auto today.

After all this, ball joints should be relatively easy (and I've done the passenger side before).

I'll post back with results.

The key think here I learned is that having a lift makes a world of difference in diagnostics, but at least now I have learned how the front end works and I have a much better idea how to manage it!

He said my steering play looked a little worn, but to start with the other parts first and see if that helped.