I had a local customers truck in the shop last week, that had bought and installed a different companies complete front end kit for his 01 silverado, in april of last year, installed it in april as well.
He contacted me because he was having a hard time keeping ball joints from breaking, and he had terrible slop in his steering, so much that he could turn the wheel a quarter turn, and the trucks wheels would not move. I all ready knew what the problems were, and told him how to fix it, but he insisted on bringing it here to replace the components, upper arms, lower arms and steering.
I got the truck up on the lift and could not believe what i had seen. Among a number of problems with the upper and lower arms, the steering setup on this truck was scarry.
Here is the setup on the truck, look at that heim joint... how many threads do you think are holding it in place?:
Heres your answer, 3. 3 threads are holding that crucial part of your steering in place:
So, we got it all taken apart, and look at the components to see if anything can be re-used. not a chance, these are the absolute cheapest series of heim joints i have ever seen, there was soo much slop in the ball of the heim joint, that you could measure it, the ball just rattled around in the housing, after 3 months of driving.
And lastly, the center sleeve that couples the heim joint with the stock steering shaft.... it was just so marred up from having to use vice grips on it, to tighten it, since there was no flat spot machined onto the sleeve to have a wrench hold it. As you can see, we fixed that.
Made a correct fitting sleeve, to he held in place with half the heim joint threaded into the sleeve:
Just now need to fix the upper and lower arm setup, and this will be on the road!