I have some slop in my steering. I can wiggle the wheel quite a bit back and forth and have no input to the wheels. I appears that the u joint moves fine and the bearings/hubs dont wiggle excessively. What can I do to narrow it down?

Is it the rack or tierod ends?

 

I would put the car on jack stands and then try to move the steering wheel. If it moves like it should then its some kind of bearing.

I taped a hot dog roasting stick to my steering shaft and just moved the steering wheel slightly, verifying that the shaft was doing what the wheel did.

I made the mistake of replacing the rack before I did enough testing, turns out my LT1 ragjoint on the steering shaft was junk. Replaced with solid LS unit and havnt had issues since.

 

Rag joint

 

What year is the car? How many miles on it?



Only if it's an LT1 car, I believe. As far as I know, when GM switched to the LS engines, they changed the steering shaft, and the newer one doesn't have the rag joint.

 

Only if it's an LT1 car, I believe. As far as I know, when GM switched to the LS engines, they changed the steering shaft, and the newer one doesn't have the rag joint.[/QUOTE]

^^^

 

Turns out the lower screw on the steering shaft became loose. Threw some loctite and retorqued it, good to go!