If you go down the road, the steering wheel goes from left to right by itself. It just started happening suddenly. Any ideas??

 

The Surgeon General does not recommend driving on LSD. j/k.

Seriously, maybe tighten your steering box? There's a hex screw you tighten with an Allen key. Does the truck wander left to right?

 

PRobably a separated tire will cause a jerking motion from side to side. Take your truck to a tire professional or jack it your self and spin tire. Feel the entire tread for a "lump". IF you do, that is your separation and get that off the vehicle.

I have sold tires for the past14 yrs.

 

Will be checking the tires this weekend. Thanks. I wouldn't have considered that.

 

I just had the same thing happen to me not long ago on a F150. Tread seperation was the cause. I couldnt tell just by looking at the tire until the truck was up on the rack and we spun it, you could then see the tread doing its own thing side to side and up and down. Not safe to drive on.

 

Explain exactly how it does it and if you stop on a gravel area and move it back and forth will it go away? This could be that problem that I had a marathon thread on a while back ; steering jerks back and forth

 

Didn't happen to me but to the wife. She had my daughter video it while it happened to show me.

Let's start from the beginning. She first had an issue where the truck suddenly went to the left hard. I didn't have any issues when I tested it but decided to check the brakes. Found one of the caliper mount pins frozen stuck (left side) and the piston side pads on both calipers worn down to paper. So I took out the all the pins and cleaned them, greased them and put them back with new pads. Still had some twitchyness to the steering but I wasn't sure if it was the same way it felt as always or us now being oversensitive to all movements. She uses it Tuesday and gets the video of the steering wheel rocking back and forth by itself while going about 20 mph. It went away but this sucks. I'm just about ready to get rid of it since I don't have time to play guessing games.

Wanted to add in that she said when it first happened it felt like the hubs were locked.

 

My Dodge 2500 did something similar when the front axle u-joint were seizing up. I ended up having to replace the joints on both sides.

 

This turned out to be a big mystery to me and never really found out what it was but it was really bad but intermittant and it stopped when I changed the PS pump because I thought a valve in the PS box needed more pressure but I also lubed the front u-joints at the same time. If it continues, try going to a gravel or loose area and move the steering back and forth to clear it. (That will tell if it is the same thing I had)

 

One of the things I found was if you held the brakes while turning the steering wheel, it was very difficult to turn them. I asked the wife to do that while I looked under the hood. Didn't see anything out of the ordinary till I opened the PS fluid reservoir. Without brakes, the fluid moves visibly. With the brakes applied while turning or attempting to turn, the fluid isn't moving. You hear the typical PS, hydraulic type sound though. I checked the belts tension and it's not as tight as I think it should be so I might try a new tensioner and belt first.

Can someone look and see if their PS fluid moves in the reservoir when turning the wheel with the brakes applied?? Thanks

 

The wheel will be hard to turn with the brakes on due to the steering geometry because the wheels go back and forth when you turn......this is normal. I would change that belt first and your tensioner is probably OK.

 

a bad hub bearing can have 2 symptoms. 1st would be if you hit the brakes it would pull to one side. you did mention that. what happens is the caliper gets compressed by the rotor movement and now you have a delay on that wheel when you hit the brakes and it pulls to the good side. And 2nd, the wheel would wobble. jack it up enough to wedge a pry bar under the tire. try to lift the wheel and note any movement.

 

He said it does it by itself.

 

Ok, going to start messing with this today. Took it for a short drive and while it didn't go side to side on me, the steering is real twitchy and the vehicle will not stay centered long. It has a combination of traits. It seems to be real sensitive to road undulations. Steering feels to go from under and over boosted. It feels tight or firm then suddenly loose. Everything seems to point at hydraulics but I will be double checking everything and consider what some have posted here as well.

See you later.

 

Well, spent some quality time with the truck Saturday. In my vehicles case, I believe I found the issue with the steering wheel going left to right. My brakes.

When I jacked up the truck, I grabbed the tires at the 6 and 12 position and at the 3 and 9 position and shook strongly. Nothing. Tight and without movement. When I spun the tires, they didn't exactly spin easily so I figured to check the brakes again. As I said earlier, I replaced the pads recently. The rotors had no noticeable warp at the time and the surface wasn't scored so I did a pad slap. While I cleaned and greased the pins, I didn't do as good a job as I should have. Not my style normally but it was Sunday and I wanted to get the truck back together quickly.

I took the whole thing apart again, removed the caliper support from the vehicle and cleaned the bores with a gun bore brush and some scotchbrite. I replaced the pin boots and greased the pins with some caliper grease. Smooth as butter. I also found that the pads didn't move freely back and forth so I ground a bit of the tangs down so they would move a little easier and replaced the metal clips the pads ride in. The last thing that I noticed was the lack of pad springs when I swapped out the pads so with the pin boots kit came the springs and I installed those as well.

Put everything back together and took it on the road. Truck feels good. No more left to right steering wheel movement. I think the pads were sticking to the rotors a little too tightly. Going down a steep downgrade after driving locally for an hour to test the truck revealed some rotor warp. I think this answers a lot for me.