Hey guys i recently bought a chevy blazer and it has some issues i dont know big or small but with reading what i have so far im nervous to even drive my truck

my steering wheel has free play and is loose i dont like it .. ive read i need to replace my rag joint but ii cant find one for purchase online and i cant figure out if its a exspensive fix... ive read that its called the death wobble and that scares me

secondly my vents blow hot air thats so hot and i took the glovebox apart to find the bypass module to stop the heat but i couldnt figure what i was doing so i gave up and put it back together

and my last question is how do i know if i need spark plugs? ive read there common to go on them .. when i start the truck it has a hesitation and sounds like it will stall but it starts up everytime

If you guys read this please help me out because i do not want to drive the truck with issues like im having

 

I don't know how to break this to you but, you don't have a rag joint. Your steering problem is in either, the steering box, pitman arm, idler arm, tie rod ends, ball joints or a combination of some or all of the above. Take it to a good alignment shop and they will fix you up. Or if you like wrenching, get yourself a repair manuel and go at it. You'll have to get more specific before anyone can help on here. I don't know about the heater problem. As far as the plugs go, if it's not running well it probably needs a tune up. Do the plugs first, A C Delco, the correct heat range and gap for your truck, they'll know at the parts store where you pick them up. You might try a new distrubitor cap and rotor and some new plug wires and an air filter. Or, if you can talk to the previous owner and find out when it was tuned up last, you should have a better idea of what all you need to do. Good luck.

 

I only thought the rag joint cause I couldn't think of anything else but is repairing the wobble in the steering wheel exspensive?

my main thing I wanna fix Is just the steering wheel

I have another issue with the gas pedal it feels like the gas pedal has sunken a little and could be raised up a tad

 

If you're gonna' start hackin' at the steering, most of the schematics are in this website. If not, PM me on it, I just got Factory Shop Manual for '98 S-vehicle...

Stay away from Chiltons / Haynes / Clymers. They should have a round hollow binder, and hang in the library. Tear a page, read, wipe, flush, repeat. (Crinkle if tender in the hindquarters)

 

so many questions, so little info given (talking about the OP).

going by your screen name, i'm gonna guess it's a '98 LT that you're asking about?

whenever i buy a vehicle, i always do a full tune up on it-regardless of what the previous owner says was done to it. this means plugs, cap & rotor, pcv, fuel & air filters. and when it comes to plugs on these trucks, stick with the regular AC Delco's, they seem to like those best.

you mention the heat in your truck not shutting off, are you unlucky enough to have the Auto Climate Control system in it? if you do, you'll never get the heat to shut off completely.

i've tried to figure it out, even asked a good friend of mine who has worked been a GM tech for 25 years (these are the issues he deals with every day), and he told me that when these trucks first came out, there ere many customer's that complained about this exact issue, and here wasn't a damn thing he could do to rectify the problem. he even said he remebers hearing a service manager telling a customer to "learn to live with it"! mine drives me up the freakin' wall, mostly because i'm already wearing shorts, so you can only imagine what i'm like during the Summer.

as for the "free play" in your steering, is it something that if you were driving, the steering wheel would all of a sudden move, but the truck really doesn't change direction? or the truck will just wander in one direction suddenly? this sounds like it's the pitman arm. i'd check there first.

you don't mention what the mileage on your truck is, but i know that when i bought my '98 in Dec/08 with only 158K kms, the pitman was toast. the steering wheel would move (turn) more than a quarter of a turn, without the truck changing direction.
while i wouldn't go so far as to say it won't suffer from "death wobble", i drove my truck back & forth to work for almost 2 weeks (85% highway) before i got around to changing it, and not once did i ever have a feeling that the "death wobble" was gonna happen.

still, you don't wanna mess around with your steering system, get it to a professional shop for a diagnosis (and an estimate), it doesn't cost you anything to have someone inspect the truck and tell you what's wrong with it.

 

look into checking the steering components..my idler arm went and the thing felt loose as hell...what i did was jack it up in the center (brace the vehicle so it wont fall or anything) then move the wheels around. mine was loose left to right. i think if its top and bottom you are looking at ball joints / tie rods.
look around with some searches...its all here...just have to look.

 

ya it's computer controlled clmate control.. and what makes everything worse is the driver window doesn't go Down so it sucks so bad

and when Im driving and I turn the wheel while in a straight line.. the car doesn't move only when I turn the wheel more will it start to shift .. I hate it cause when switching lanes I shouldn't hve to turn the wheel so much as if I was makng an actual turn

and yes it's a 98 blazer LT 100 thousand miles on it

but is there a way to get AC workng? I'm gonna bring it to a mechanic but I just forked out the money to pay for the truck so I'm a little broke now

 

If you want to check the steering, lie down under the front of the truck and have a friend (with the engine off) turn the steering wheel back and forth through the loose play, you don't have to turn the wheels. Look at the arm that comes off the steering box to the inner tie rod,(the Pittman arm) and on the opposite side there's an arm comming off the frame that mimmicks the movement of the Pittman arm (that's the idler arm). One of these is probably the problem, and it's something you can change yourself. If either one is worn, you'll see movement where it connects to the inner tie rod, it's made like a ball joint, only bigger. Let us know what you find, Good luck.

 

Your A/C charge you can check with a Mickey Mouse gauge/refill kit from Advance / Zone.

It's not good for absolute pressure of charge, but you can tell if you need a can, you can get RELATIVE pressures to see if it's movin' freon, and how pressure looks when off...

ONE use saves the purchase price UH HUH.

 

yeah ill let you know, ill open this thread back up when i do it later in the week, im gonna play with it next week.

as for the a/c im going to get freon hoping that works but my guess is after the freon it will blow cool air instead of hot or cold .. because the valve is open i think .. not sure