Hello everyone,
Great forum! I have a question about a 2000 durango. Its my wifes car, so i havn't driven it in a while. I recently took it to get the oil changed and noticed it handles like crap! It seems to have alot of body roll and seems to "oversteer" itself. It has a new set of BF goodriches on it but, she said it was doing it before that. I went online and ordered a set of Bilstein shocks, i thought that would be a good place to start since the stock shock are still on. What else would make it handle this way? I climbed underneath and nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Jack up the front end and try to wiggle the tire at the 9 and 3 o clock position and the 12 and 6 o clock positions... See if you have any play...

 

could be Ball joints, tie rod ends, tie rod, the steering box needs adjusted.

What I would do is jack up the front end by the frame to take the weight off. Get a friend and wiggle all steering conponants. Get you friend to hold the other side and help you watch for movement in all joints. Also check the tire play as ^ Neo1130 ^ explained to check ball joints for ware. Check everything out good.

If you can't find anything take it and have a 4 wheel aglinment done. Firestone will do it and you can buy a lifetime 4 wheel aglinment for about $150 and have it done whenever you want or pay for a one timmer and it's about $80 bucks. Tell them the problem to help them keep an eye on things. You'll want to do this for the new tires anyway and besides if theres a problem they will tell you what it is and shouldn't charge you for the work because they can't do it........LOL

Get the info and have them fix it or do it as you need or can afford.

I had a problem with that and everything was rebuild and good but I still had play in the steering wheel so I had Firestone adjust the steering box for $30 bucks and it cured that problem.

 

Good info the others posted but I would put my money on it being ball joints need replaced... Uppers are easy but the lower can be a real pain to do. all 4 ball joints will run you just over $200 for quality Moog (don't go cheap).. Do the work yourself and save a ton of money. I just did it for somebody and to quote him I called the dealer to see what they would charge to do the upper lower and outer tie rods, their price was $890..
Add 2 outers to the price of $200 for ball joints your looking around $300 in total in parts, do the work yourself and save $500+ if you know how. (then you still need to align the truck)

 

Yeah you do need an alignment

 

A 4 wheel aglinment is nesessary after any front end work.

 

Thanks for the ideas guys! I'm going to get this figured out this weekend.