I'll stand by you with that statement too.

 

Looks like I might have found the problem, after having the old lady jerk the steering wheel around, looks like the tie rod that bolts to the pitman arm has little play, and I mean little play, I could couldn't get it to move with some big *** pliers. There's little moment, the thing that caught my attention was while holding the tie rod I felt a clack when turning either way.

Getting a new tie rod today under warranty.
Now I do believe the wife might of hit something but wont tell sor maybe the tie rod was a POS

 

I wouldn't either unless you want to lose your "steering wheel jerker".

 

The next question is why didn't the alignment shop catch it?

 

No clue, maybe they use the plier technique which I personally did and there was no play, only when I had someone move the steering wheel around is when I found the tiny slop.

 

I wont ask again don't want to loose that jerker either

 

So I installed the tie rod yesterday, and we'll steering is way better but still have some wander, I'm rotating tires today and see what happens.

 

How about the idler arm bushing?

 

OBS trucks have an idler arm?

 

No idlers arms in a 00 or a 2wd obs

 

OH, it's 2wd.

 

Finally got back at checking the truck.

After hours of moving steering around from lock to lock, removing one outer tie rod at a time and turning the wheel side to side and still feeling a drag, removing both outer tie rods and turning bo more drag, hmmm.

Moved driver side tire from lock to lock and theres zero binding, same thing on passenger side I can easily turn the wheels with my stinky pinky, it only happened with either tie rod was connected, which is freaking weird, never have I encounter something like this. I removed the steering damper to rule it out again, same thing.

After going thru my scrap pile I found the old tie rod's (the one one that connects both knuckles, installed it and same thing. At this point I'm just throwing **** to see what sticks to no avail.

At the end out of frustration and being heat soaked from the heat, i bit the bullet and took out the ball joints, warranty them out, install them, and put everything back together. After a shower, some food and quick rest took her for a test drive and what do you know the ball joints actually worked, how and why but it worked.

Now someone enlighten me why was it that I could easily turn the wheels with out the tie rods connected but was hard to turn with the tie rods attached even with the dam steering wheel? Makes zero sense but hey there's always something nrw to learn.

 

Something binding when under load?

 

When I replaced the ball joints on my truck, it eliminated steering wander that I didn't even know was there. Test drive felt like I was driving a sports car compared to what it was doing before.