what are the symtoms of a bad power steering box?.........Dallas

 

Lots of slop in the steering wheel. If the lower seal goes, all of the PS fluid will leak out and your won't have any power steering. I have replaced 4 on my truck and this is usually what happens.

 

heyCowboy, did you have any type of crazy tire wear from having the bad box...box isn't leaking just have lots of play and now with new tires on it with new tracbar and alignment, tires are starting to wear wierd. How big of a job is it to do the box.....Dallas

 

I can do one in under an hour, but like I said, I have put 4 on my truck. 3 in the past year. 3 bolts hold it to the frame, disconnect 2 hoses and unhook the steering shaft. You also have to take the pitman arm off of the old box and put it on the new one.

The only time I had problems with weird front end wear was when the ball joints and one of the front bearings had gone bad. I would check that because I don't see how a bad box could cause uneven tire wear.

I also put a steering stabilizer bracket on my truck from PSC Motorsports. It cured the road wander problems. Check out the link below.
http://www.pscmotorsports.com/produc...products_id=90

 

define weird tire wear. What's it doing?

 

put on new tires and I noticed that the right side tire was wearing on the inside. Beofre I put the new tires on I did the tracbar and full alignment and the guy said everything was nice and tight..the steering box does have play in it,wants to wonder all over the road and I was wondering if the box could do that to the tires. Noticed yesterday after a 3 hour drive from upstate NY that I had to put more input to the steering to keep the truck straight, pulled to the left pretty bad and never did that before and then I noticed the tire wear problem........Dallas

 

I had the exact same problem and the alingment shop told me everything was fine. After taking back to them 3 times in 2 weeks, I decided they were idiots and took it across town. That guy knew Dodges and checked it out and the ball joints were toast, the trac bar was bad and the hub bearings were history. My tire was wearing on the inside on the passenger side and it wander all over the road.

After a new trac bar, ball joints and hub bearings it worked fine for a long time. Then it started wandering again and the bracket from PSC seemed to do the trick.

You can try to adjust some of the slop out of you gear box, but if you have other problems it may not get all of the slop out.

 

If it is wearing on the inside of the tread and it's all over the road, that would indicate a toe out condition. I would check all ball joints and tierod ends, then if they all check out good, I would check the toe. If you have flat level pavement and a buddie, you can do this yourself and save a few $$$

 

I'Ve known this guy for a long time and trust me, he knows his stuff. I"m going to go over everything today if it stops raining here. How do you go about checking the front hub bearings?.........Dallas

 

Jack the truck up so that the wheel is not touching the pavement. Then hold the top and bottom of the tire at the same time, pull out with one hand and push in with the other. Do this back and forth a few times. If it doesn't move the bearings are ok. There may be a better way to do it, but that is how I always check them.