Hello all! As I've been working on my projects with my truck I've slowly figured out that even though she was garaged her whole life that the previous owners did NO service past the first couple years after they bought the vehicle. They never had the transmission bands adjusted making me have to replace the second gear band (luckily the drum wasn't scored to crap) I replaced the brakes the other day due to a grinding noise happening on the passenger front side (turns out they were the stock brakes from 99), the noise go's away when I put any amount of pressure on the brake pedal, even after replacing the brakes the noise is still there, might be the dust plate rubbing on the rotors but it's strange because I was positive I bent these back when I had the rotor off and made sure there was no contact but I'll double check soon, I feel like this sound could possibly be a hint to the bump steering problem.

It seems as if the entire front end of the truck is messed up, I've had to replace the steering gear box, the shocks(with Ranchos), the inner and outter tierods, both wheel bearings and the Pitman arm that comes off the steering box. I have a squeaking coming out of the front end when I go over little bumps or turn hard. The bushings for the upper control arms look bad and so do the swaybar bushings. It looks like the front passenger side of the vehicle is lower than most the vehicle and when I go over bumps it makes my steering wheel go super wack.
Could my ride height be off and causing these parts to fail earlier on my passenger front? Would you have any post around here that explain adjusting ride height thuroughly?
Should I just go ahead and replace upper and lower control arms to get the ball joints out of the equation too? I'm also having trouble figuring out what swaybar bushing fits a 99 4x4 SLT+ 5.9 seems like they used 3 different types of bushings for the same year due to the models.
I'm damn good with electronics and super complicated engine crap but when it comes to suspension I feel like a total idiot 😂 I think if I replace these control arms that's almost every steering/suspension component under the b*tch 🤣 the noise also makes me worry about the knuckle because where the original 99 brakes were sitting on the knuckle wore little notches into the knuckle. The brakes are SMOOTH after I replaced them it's only when I'm not using them that the grinding noise happens.
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Did the pads come with new anti-rattle clips? Or the funny little backing plates? Did you use any variety of anti-squeal on the backs of the pads? How are the wheel bearings? Give 'em the shake test??

 

The brakes did come with little silver clips that my brakes originally didn't have on them, I searched multiple videos on how to do the brakes on the Dakota/Durango trying to figure out where they go but it seems like every video I saw from professional to "I got my camera and my driveway" nobody had the clips on and nobody put them on so I figured they may have been for another application.

I checked my hubs again, they are fine, I replaced the passenger one about a month ago and the driver about 6 months ago. I did crank my T-bars a bit today to see if that would get me anywhere, after cracking them I nolonger have a squeak when going over bumps and the ride quality has improved though the passenger side still feels slightly weird. The noise is a lot quiter now but it's still there. I'm almost starting to wonder if it's possibly the CV axle?

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I did relube the slide pins and add some lube to the back and the slides for the nucke on the brake pads.

 

How are your shocks??

 

My shocks are good, brand new ranchos. After cranking the torsion bars I've found that the sound is coming more from the mid of the vehicle somewgere between the front wheels. I was concerned it might be the diff so I threw it into 4wd and it seems like it was binding when I'd go into reverse and turn the vehicle. I'm hoping it's not a bad diff. How hard is it to wrench one of them out I'm sure the junk yard has thousands of them.
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If you were on a high traction surface, the binding in 4 wheel drive is pretty normal. Try turning things in front by hand, see if anything feels off.

 

Well life got pretty hectic for a bit but I did quite a bit of diagnostics with good ol the eyeballs and hammer fists to figure out that quite a few problems are contributing to this issue.
1. Bad passenger CV axle
2. Bad ball joints on the upper and lower control arms
3. Pretty much bad bushings all round
4. The passenger wheel was slightly misaligned
​​​​​​5. Wheel hub went bad due to these issues
6. Me for not taking care of some of these issues sooner when I knew parts were going down hill

The CV axle and missaligned wheel caused the wheel hub to wobble slightly which pushed the brake pads back Into the calipers so they would rest too far out from the rotor which would cause them to grind.