Steering wheel shakes only with bumps

I'm trying to repair an '02 for a friend. The truck very recently started having a pretty bad shake in the steering wheel when hitting just about any bump or irregularity in the road.

It's not DW (death wobble) as it doesn't just take off on it's own and keep going.

The steering is otherwise tight, I'm not talking about play in the steering, I'm talking about "tight" excessive feedback from road irregularities. It did have a tiny bit of a clunk and I fixed that today by tacking the slip shaft.

It otherwise does not wander or pull.

The steering rack, rack bushings and tie rods were replaced 2 years ago, but it is again leaking (%^&%%^ Cardone rebuild!). Can a "weak" steering rack cause this? I'm not convinced. I'll replace the rack but I don't think it's going to fix THIS problem.

I'm unable to find any play in tie rods or ball joints.

I'm also wondering about front shocks, will they cause the steering wheel to shake on bumps like this? With the "bounce test" the shocks don't strike me as blown but they have been in there for a long, unknown length of time. I've just never known bad shocks to cause excessive steering wheel feedback on other vehichles, but this IFS is a bit different than much of what I'm real familiar with.

I'm just at a loss, it's as if the truck could really benefit from a steering stabilizer but it made it ~185k without one with no issues, so something else significant has changed.

What am I missing?

 

If you grab the wheel at the top and bottom and try to push the wheel up or down in place, Is there movement?

 

Like in the tilt mechanism? No, I don't recall anything like this

It drives similar to bump steer (but a bit worse) but of course there's no track bar and drag link to match up with IFS LOL