Recently I replaced my axle pivot and radius arm bushings, on my first attempt on the drivers side I tried using a breaker bar and a long pipe to break the nut loose, prior to realizing I was going to need heat to get it off. I finally got everything replaced,and the steering really tightened up, but now I'm getting a slight pull to the left, particularly when I hit the brakes. By looking at the radius arms, the drivers side looks slightly different, but I don't know if its just in my head or if its actually bent.

I forgot to mention that I still get a pop occasionally when slow breaking but it may be completely unrelated to the bushings.

 

Take a pic of it and post it up.

 

I've put some serious torque on my radius arm bushing nuts, and have not had any issues. The passenger side front wheel also hit a ledge hard enough to bend the radius arm bracket back, and the arm itself was fine. Maybe if your driver side arm was really rusty?

I suspect you over tightened the driver side radius arm nut (or under tightened the passenger side?) and pulled that half of the axle further back than the passenger side, giving you the leftward pull.

 

Subscribing. My truck has had the same symptoms for while now. I actually thought the problem was the radius arm bushings so I swapped them out and the problem is the same.

I was going to take things back apart and do pivot bushings but after reading that your truck is doing this with new new pivot bushings, I may wait.

 

Here are a couple pics, maybe several sets of eyes can tell me if its all in my head or not, I wouldnt have thought that I could have bent a radius arm that easily. I torqued both sides to 120 ft/lbs so they should be pretty close in that department.


Drivers side

Passenger side

 

That drivers side looked crooked/bent compared to the passenger side. I would take real measurements to confirm.

 

I agree with timbersteel. It looks bent, but I'm guessing it's the camera angle.

I had to check the pic because it looked like you were using an ultrawide lens or fisheye. Yeah, with a focal length of freaking 5mm, that pic is going to look really distorted.

 

I just shot pics of my driver and passenger side radius arms. Theres some distortion, but I'm leaning to a distorted arm from your pic your posted.

Driver side


Passenger side

 

Yeah, after looking at yours mine definitely looks bent, Looks like I'll be buying one of those now. Thanks for taking the time to post some comparison pics.

 

If possible, take a straight edge to both and compare, and measure distance front to back and see if one is shorter. If you replace it, please keep us posted on the results.

 

That thing is definitely bent. I think Ford still sells new brackets.

 

I took some measurements and the drivers side was approximately 3/16 shorter than the passenger side, with a ball-joint press and some redneck ingenuity I was able to bend it back to within less than a 1/16th. not perfect but better than it was. Im thinking it was bent when I bought the truck but didn't notice untill I replaced the junk bushings with new stiff ones, it took a heck of a lot of force to get it bent back.

 

Does it drive any better?

 

It does drive better, I can take my hands off of the wheel going down the freeway an it goes reletively strait, where as before I could only take them off for a second or Id be in the median.