I have had the exact same problem before and it ended up being the front callipers they were seizing and not releasing all the time so one day it would pull to the left one day to the right and some days it would be OK.

Does it pull to one side when you apply the brakes?

 

To be honest I'm not sure if it pulls when braking for sure. I think it does pull to the right slightly, but I've almost always got the wheel turned to the left to compensate for the pulling anyways and haven't noticed. I also do little/no hard braking. I try to time all my turns and stops and coast as much as I can to save on gas. Sounds lame, but I also have the worst possible insurance known to man on my truck, so I keep distance between cars and avoid hard braking situations.

 

Unless the hubs are locked, I don't see how u-joints should affect steering issues.

edit: umm - maybe, could be.

 

even if hubs are unlocked they can make it pull and steer jerky they rust up git stiff and then dont turn easy seen it many times may not be the problem here but its worth a look could be a bad calliper hang up also as said here befor

 

to check the calipers jack up the frotn and have someone apply the brakes and as soon as they release them try to turn the wheel by hand.

 

How easily should the wheels turn? If I spin them should they be able to spin freely or will they stop spinning as soon as I stop movin em? I meant to get around to tryin that tonight but I got busy getting things ready to paint the visor and flares.

 

Unless the brakes are dragging or your u joints or hubs ares fried they should spin freely and slowly come to a stop if they stop as soon as you stop turning them by hand and you cant put enough spin on them to keep em spinning for about 10-15 sec Id say theres something dragging or hanging up.

 

Well i got the front end up in the air and spun the tires. Both would spin freely after I moved them for about 3-4 seconds before stopping. Not exactly the 10-15 seconds i was lookin for but they were equal. Also had a bad fuel leak today. Dripping at least once or twice per second at idle on the concrete. Messed with the water drain valve and now it mysteriously doesnt leak anymore. But as for the steering...I'm stumped. Dont want to replace a steering pump if its not the problem, and dont know what to check next. Any thoughts?

 

i'd get it back up in the air and be checking play in your steering column, in to and out of gear box, tie-rods, and ball joints.

also- how is your belt and steering pump pulley? maybe you are slipping if they are worn or greasy?

 

As long as they both rolled freely for about the same amount of time Id say theyre fine too. I agree w/ eric apic it up and start checking out everything from the knuckles working your way back to the steering wheel any excess play, bad belt ets. The only other thought which is reall hard to test is your PS pump if the bearings in it are starting to die at the pulley they can from time to time hang up for a second or two but that would usually cause it not to want to steer not take off wherever it wants, That or the steering gear box itself some of them you can adjust the steering worm gear tension, that might help, I cant remember if there is an adjustment on these truck or not though.

 

To test your ball joints jack each front wheel about an inch off the ground and put a prybar or long pipe under the tire to jack the tire up and down real hard with. Have someone else do that so you can look at the joints for any movement.
For the tie rod ends just leave the front end on the ground and have someone in the cab wiggling the wheel back and forth real slowly while you look at all the joints.
Pay close attention to the shaft coming out of the steering box where the pitman arm attaches and the pitman arm itself.

Since it seems to dart off both directions at different times I'm starting to lean towards your alignment being off real bad. It sounds like a lot of positive toe on it. That will make it feel like driving a riding lawn mower at 60 miles an hour. These trucks call for a good bit of caster, different on both sides too, and a slight amount of toe in. I usually give them a little more toe in that spec'd because our roads down here are so rutted but factory specs should be fine in most areas.

Is your steering wheel on straight when you're driving most of the time? If not then it's not aligned right and I'd have it checked.
Straightening that steering wheel is part of setting the toe. On some of our trucks it's the tie rod sleeve on the right that does it by itself and on the others both sleeves are turned to do toe and the wheel at the same time. If it's crooked then it's almost a guarantee that you are dogtracking real bad and it's nothing more than the road ruts getting ahold of your tires at an abnormal angle.

 

Sorry I didnt post back for awhile I got hung up painting the fender flares and visor. We checked the balljoints when we had it up in the air puttin the lift on and they were still in good shape. The alignment just got done, although they used the hole in the drop bracket for the 4" lift because they couldnt get it aligned in the 6" hole. Ended up dropping the front end 1 1/2". My steering wheel is almost always turned to the left slightly, but thats just to compensate for the pull. The steering wheel is loose and has quite a bit of play in it, but I just figured it was normal on a 12 year old truck. I'm going to jack it back up and check the calipers again tomorrow and check out the whole steering system. If I can't find anything I'm going to take it back to the alignment shop and tell them it still pulls right even after they aligned it.

 

First off, the old man that taught me how to do alignments on cars and trucks would have smacked me upside the head, or tried to anyway, if I even put the alignment heads on a truck with a wobbly steering wheel. That is something that should have been fixed before they even attempted the alignment. It's so simple on these trucks that I never even charged people extra for it. Just loosen one little locknut, tighten screw a little, tighten locknut. 15 seconds usually.

Your alignment is whacked I can pretty safely say now. Not sure what you meant by using the 4 inch hole vs 6 inch. If it's what I'm thinking then it is really whacked. Without knowing what brand lift, how high it is and if it was even done right in the first place I can't comment much on that but if it's a suspension lift over a couple inches then it needs at least a drop piman on it or another mod to keep the same steering geometry as stock. Otherwise it will be all over the road and potentially be very dangerous.

When I did lifts I usually did a dropped pitman equal to the number of inches in the lift. Or dropped the steering box and made a bracket for it.

I've aligned military trucks with the new flotation tires, way too many of them, hundreds of back yard bubba'd 4x4's and even a jacked up 69 camaro I had a long time ago on a ford F-100 4x4 chassis with a 18 inch lift and 44's under it. Never had a wheel pull or crooked steering wheel yet.

 

this is the bracket he is talking about- the hole that my axle is in is the 6 inch lift kit hole, the one 2 -3 inches above it is for the 4 inch lift kit.


i beleive he bought a skyjacker so it should be the identical bracket to what i just posted, and it should have the accompanied 6 inch drop pitman arm on it.

 

Thanks, A picturesays a thousand words! I understand now. He said he has a 6 inch lift but they had to put that in the 4 inch hole if I remember correctly. It sounds like they ignored caster or set it near zero, BIG MISTAKE! just so they could somehow get camber in spec. The alignment bushings aren't good for that much adjustment. There are ones that are but they suck in my opinion. Hopefully he has the 6 inch dropped pitman at least so his tie rod geometry is at factory specs.

I don't know how many of you have ever had an old front wheel drive caddilac but if you have you've experienced caster pull. Torque steering they call it sometimes. It sucks and it's just plain dangerous sometimes. I worked on a lot of those in Memphis that were driven on some pretty rutted roads and highways from the trucks and almost went in the ditch on a few test drives. The fix was different caster settings on each side. It counteracted the lifting on the front end under acceleration and the resulting aligment change. It's much the same thing as an out of whack twin I beam suspension. It's not being powered by the front tires but the front tires are so big and have so much weight on them that if they are off factory specs the least little bit then you will know it.

I'd really suggest calling around and finding a well experienced old timer alignment tech somewhere and ask him to do the works on it. I really think it needs a proper alignment, steering box adjusted first, all joints and bushings properly checked and the lift kit checked for proper installation.

A little food for thaught here: I aligned my big F-350 a couple weeks ago. I don't work for other shops anymore, I work on guns instead at home for a living and farm now. Needless to say I don't have an alignment rack here but I do well eyeballing toe most of the time and I have gauges for caster and camber. Anyway, I have been tweeking the alignment on my own trucks for years like this and always had great tire life and easy drivers. When I did the F-350 I totally forgot the front wheels are set out wider than the rears so after I eyeballed the toe I went out for a ride. I had the slide in in it too which made it even more dangerous. The ruts were swinging it around bad and the first big truck that passed by nearly tossed me off the road. I came back and looked at it already knowing what was wrong, the toe was set out real bad. I usually go for 1/16 to 1/8 inch toe in. The wider wheel base in the front screwed up my eyeball readings sighting down the sides of the tires while I adjusted it.
I got out the toe gauge I have and blew the dust off it to reset it properly and now that truck will drive straight even with a 60 mph cross wind on a rutted road. No more white knuckle driving! Everyone makes mistakes I guess.