I'm getting ready to get some new tires, jacked up the front to check the balljoints and tierod ends. Ball joints seem fine, tierods are tight but there is movement side to side due to the inner ball joints up and down motion. With it being a ball shape, is it not supposed to do that? There seems to be no slop in them at all but the up and down rotation of the joint causes tire movement? Does this mean the ball joints are bad? Is it common for the center link to be worn? Another note, all these parts look to be fairly new, tags still on some of them I put about 10k miles on it since ive had the truck.

 

I had to read your post a few times through to realize that the "ball" you were talking about was the ball in the tie rod end's joint.

I would check tie rod play by having the truck on the ground. Drive it forward a couple feet with steering wheel straight ahead before testing, as that will allow the toe-in to work, and everything in the front end will be set as in normal driving.

Then have someone rock the steering wheel back and forth, but not so much that you see the tire sidewalls start to flex. Start out with minimal rocking, and slowly move up the swing.

Look at the pitman arm, the output of the steering box. If it is moving in an arc, and the tires are not flexing, where is the movement being absorbed? You can go from pitman arm, to center link, to tie rods, etc., looking for a joint where one side is moving, and the other side of the joint, closer to the wheel, is not.
Some amount of pitman arm movement is normal, nothing is going to be 100% tight. You're just looking for something that doesn't look right.

I had a bunch of Panther-chassis cars, and it was not unusual with lots of miles to see the end of the pitman arm with the joint stay still, and the output shaft of the steering box move some side-to-side as the steering wheel was rocked. Wear in the steering box's output bushing. Would last the life of the car as long as the shaft seal held.

 

Thanks for the reply, it was difficult to put into words I guess. I'm used to the normal joint slap or clunk when they go bad. Also I only jacked up one side at a time don't know if that matters, so one wheel would be steady and rock the other while it's in the air. I do all my own work as I don't really trust anyone else to do the job "right" and I've gone to get an alignment done only to be told they couldn't loosen an adjuster sleeve, so I try to make sure my time is not wasted if you know what I mean

 

Need both wheels down and everything "relaxed" by pulling forward. You want everything loaded and operating in the usual angles, just like driving it. That's the way I've been doing it, anyway.

I gave up on "professional" wheel alignments in the early 1990's. Seems the people doing it couldn't even follow the output of the alignment machine! I ended up doing it myself, to fix their screw-up, that I had had to pay for! So why bother?!

But back in the 1970's, I often had to take a car back, like after driving it out of the place and around the block. Bad pull to a side, or the steering wheel was 1/4 turn or more off-center for going straight! And back in those days, cars needed alignments often. Everythings a lot tighter today, and seems to stay that way for a long time.

 

I checked all the joints with the tires on the ground and they were all tight, no play while someone was turning the wheel back and forth. I was about to replace all of them