loose steering.. play in the wheel ?
 

First off I have a 2001 Grand Cherokee with a budget boost lift and a little bigger tires.


My daughter has started driving and I want to tighten up the steering. It seems to have a bit of play in the wheel and it is not straight, it tilts to the left slightly.


I'm planning on replacing the stock steering stabilizer with a beefier Rough Country unit soon.


I got the tires last year and never got it aligned afterwards.


Would the steering stabilizer and alignment solve my issues and tighten up my steering?


Thanks in advance.


RIZ

There is always going to be more play in a worn&sector steering system than in a rack&pinion system due to the clearance between the gears in the steering box. Even with a brand new box, there is some play. With rack&pinion, the only clearance is between the gear teeth on the pinion and the rack, only about 0.010" at most.

The worm&sector gears in your jeep use ball bearings as gear teeth and they run in 1/2 round grooves to form the connection. As the grooves wear, there isn't too much you can do to tighten them up. You can check the play with the steering near the center as opposed to near the left and right limits to tell if the ball paths are worn. If you adjust to eliminate play in the center, you may have too much pressure at the limits and will crush the balls or break the gears or bearings.

An alignment will definitely help, but all a heavier steering stabilizer will do is make the steering stiffer, not tighten it up. What a stabilizer does is help control steering "kickback" when one tire hits an obstacle like a rock or pothole. A jeep does steer differently than a front wheel drive vehicle with rack&pinion steering. It's the nature of the beast.

The pitman arm is a notorious source of play that is easy to check and cheap to fix.

Well said, ranger. There are many things that wear and cause looseness in the steering besides the steering box. My jeep used to wander pretty badly until I replaced the lower ball joints, well actually I replaced all 4 ball joints and all the rod ends as well as the steering damper because it was leaking. The steering was pretty sensitive after that. Added note; I had replaced the front bearing hubs the year before.

If you replace the tierod ends yourself, you can get them amazingly close by using a tape measure over the grease fittings. Don't rely on counting the turns as some guys do. With a tape measure, you can get them within a 1/32" of the original length overall. Pretty freaking close. Actually, the rear alignment was off just a bit because of worn bushings, but not enough to matter. That only makes the jeep tend to drift off to one side when your hands are off the wheel, usually to the right because of torque.