Truck difficult to control

Hi all. Looking for some potential ideas on what might be going on. Tried searching, but don't see anything too similar.

Recently my truck has had very twitchy steering. I notice this pretty much all the time, but is very bad on rutted freeways. It tends to dart around and requires excessive steering input to maintain the lane. I was coming over Donner pass (I80 from Sacramento to Reno) and was havin a hell of time keeping in my lane. Much of the road is rutted out from truck chains n such. I had slowed to 50 mph for some sections, fearing that a ball joint was going to let go.

The next morning I put the truck on stands and checked everything I could think of. Everything seems normal. No lose tie rods, ball joints, struts, end links, anything. Tried tire pressures of 35, 32, then 30. I then took the truck to have it aligned. Everything was in spec already, but had them set higher caster since I've read that these trucks like higher caster. It was 2 - 2.2, now I have 3.8 - 4. No improvement, so that's not it. Steering rack maybe?

Truck is a 2017 with 16k miles. TRD Offroad, DCSB MT. Been on other road trips with it before and didn't have any issues. Made an appointment at the dealer for next week, but I haven't had the best luck with dealers around here.

Appreciate any insight you guys may have.

 

Did this happen all of a sudden?

 

Road ruts will do that to you.

 

Difficult to tell. I thought I was noticing something strange, but low speeds around town it isn't nearly as bad. The recent trip over the pass confirmed I had something going on since it was much worse.

 

I don't feel any play really. The wheel tends to pull side to side much more with bumps than it used to.

 

Any brand new concrete highways nearby that you can compare to? Those are usually poured pretty flat.

 

how is it on smooth roads at high speed?

 

Alignment

 

Did you change tires?

 

Sometimes tire tread & grooved fwys cause a bit of darting. How is your tread- even, do you have cupping?

 

Nothing super new around here, but they aren't too bad through town. It requires more steering input to keep straight at highway speeds (60-75mph).

 

It's the road.... I 80 gets bad on donner summit from truck chains.... it's even more fun when you're towing a trailer

 

You need to get your alignment checked.

 

No, still factory. About 6 or 7/32s. I rotated the tires too while I had it off the ground. No noticeable change.

 

I doubt it is the road causing this. I also live in Reno and have traveled the same I80 route as far as Truckee and back recently with none of the described problems. 2018 with almost 10,000 miles on it.

 

guess you should have gotten a sport, they like to go on pavement. But as I have learned on TW, I can not even look at dirt while in my sport.

 

Pretty even. A little outer wear, but no noticeable cupping.

 

Ya maybe lol. I like my OR a lot. I like to go off the pavement when I can, which isn't often unfortunately.

 

No mods at all? This is a stock truck?

 

Those OR stock tires are pretty on-road biased. So I doubt they are the issue.

If not the road surface, the only other thing I can think of is alignment, as already mentioned.