Steering gear trashed

My recent power steering problems apparently were from the steering gear being completely trashed and that was causing the power steering pump to overheat and eventually fail which resulted in increased steering effort.

Interestingly, the dealership claimed that it was the lift that had caused the steering gear to fail, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense as I’ve seen similar vehicles with similar geometry go much longer without any issues.

Either way, the truck now has a new steering rack a new power steering pump and the problem seems to be fixed after only one holy shit moment when there was a bubble in the power steering system when I first got it back from the dealership.

Has anyone else had something similar happened to their truck?

It’s been pretty heavily used off road but mostly on not very technical trails, I’ve destroyed one front CV axle, and the truck was exposed to at least two or three incidents of sliding into a curb during extremely icy conditions.

The wheel bearings seem fine.

 

Nope never had that issue. Granted I only have 13k miles. I am running 285/75/17 and a little bit of a lift. If they made me pay for it, I would have them prove it to me that the lift caused the power steering to go out. However, if they cry foul on bigger tires I couldn’t argue with them as the bigger tires put more stress on the steering components and I would have to look into beefing up the steering rack.

 

At one point I was running steel wheels and firestone destination MT tires which are I think like 100 pounds per wheel/tire combo. I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

Yeah you might have put some extra stress on those steering components. Hopefully it wasn’t too expensive.

 

The shock of hitting a curb or two could have affected the rack for sure. Lateral force through the tie-rods into the rack could have worn away. Your lift or useage doesn't seem like it'd have an effect. It's a YMMV kind of thing though of course.

 

It was VERY expensive, they had to lift the engine up (but they didn’t remove it as the service manual suggested).

 

if that comes up for me I am going to do an SAS.

 

Solid Axle Swap? Wow, kinda radical, no?

 

Go big or go home I guess. Hoping I don’t have to go that far but hey it would be fun. Might as well throw 40’s on it if I do that.

 

That sucks to hear. Sorry dude