I've been working on my 94 S-10 Blazer trying to get the steering nice and tight. Over the past year I've replaced the lower ball joints, the upper ball joint on the right side, the outer tie rod ends, the idler arm, the rag joint with a U-joint, and, on Wednesday, the Pitman arm. I had it aligned after each major repair.

Now it steers perfectly when I turn the wheel off-center. It's smooth and almost returns to center properly. On center, however, it wanders ever so slightly to the right or left. Sometimes I have to hold the wheel slightly to the right to keep it from going too far to the left on a curve.

I can't find any play or looseness anywhere in the steering linkage. I took off the front skid plate so I could look at everything. I've checked for play at every joint and I can't find any. What else is there to check? Is it possible that the steering gear is worn or out of adjustment? How would I check the steering gear? Any other ideas?

 

So.. first thing is to check steering wheel free travel with column unlocked and engine off.

If there's any appreciable.. say 3/4 inch or more... Steering box. Verify by propping truck with jackstands on LCA's. Grab sides of driver side tire while watching steering shaft, should be firm resistance till hard resistance when shaft moves and not much movement until shaft moves

If that seems 'tight'

- UCA bushings worn

- Sway link bushings worn.. you would notice 'bump steer'

But most likely steering box. Why Rack and pinion is greatest invention since sliced bread.

 

Thanks for the info. I have a lot of experience with rack and pinion on all my wife's FWD cars of the past but troubleshooting steering gear boxes is fairly new to me. Everything else in the system is fairly new and tight.

I'll check the truck out later in the week (preferably on a dry day) and report back.

 

How difficult is it to access the adjustment on the steering gear? I have not had time to look into it but need to adjust my steering box soon. I guess 278K miles will do that.....

 

The adjustment on these Saginaw boxes is pretty easy to get to if you remove the air intake box. There's an Allen head set screw with a nut on it. It's right on top of the steering box. Loosen the nut and then you can turn the set screw with an Allen wrench. Don't turn the set screw more than a quarter turn. Test drive the vehicle and see how it's doing. Once you like how it steers tighten down the nut and put the air box back in.

I haven't done any more diagnostic work on my Blazer yet. I've had a busy week. I'll report back once I check it out. I suspect a box adjustment may be in my future.

 

Turns out mine is a combo problem so I can't properly adjust the box just yet. Rag joint is also beginning to wear. Also determined the source of a coolant leak to be the lower intake

 

You definitely need to solve the rag joint problem first. I put a Flaming River u-joint on my steering shaft. That cleaned up the steering quite well. The next thing I did was replace the Pitman arm because the connection to the center link was loose. Now it's nice and tight through the turning radius but still loose in the middle. Once you tighten up the rag joint you'll be able to more accurately gauge the condition of the steering box.

My brother-in-law has been busy lately so I haven't checked my steering box yet but I hope to get to that in the next couple days.

 

agreed, I will be replacing it soon, not something that I want to have fail on or off road lol. Also, where did you get the universal from?

 

Wow - This is my next project! Glad I found this thread!

Anyone running the Jeep Cherokee column/intermediate shaft - I know Jeep owners hate when you run jeep stuff on Blazers, but that's the fun of it! LoL

 

I bought my u-joint from Summit Racing via eBay. The process for installing it was relatively easy. I detailed my process in another thread somewhere. I think the job took me about 90 minutes, tops. I also had the experience of rebuilding the rag joint on my wife's 93 Jimmy and, after having done that, I much prefer the u-joint. It was far easier to replace the rag joint with the u-joint than it was to take the rag joint apart and replace the rubber disc. They both perform about the same (they're both nice and tight) but I like how the u-joint steers. It feels a little smoother than the rag joint.