Sway bar delete causing steering slop?

My truck is mostly used for mild offroading, I live about 20 miles from the base of the mountains. Because of that I decided to remove my sway bar about 25,000 miles ago. I also am running 35"x12.5" Yokohama Geolander MT tires, all of this is context for my question.

It constantly feels like my tires are fighting eachother. Like the truck is constantly switching between which tire it wants to follow. Contant micro corrections to the steering wheel. When I put a jack under the driver control arm and lift the driver tire off the ground, and I apply side to side in and out pressure to check for tie rod slop, I found that I was getting the side to side movement I suspected, not much, but movement. What's weird is that it wasnt my outer tie rod that has movement, my whole inner rod was pushing into the steering rack, and my steering shaft and steering wheel were moving. All white the passenger tire was on the ground with full weight on it.

Could this be my steering rack going out? Or perhaps not having the sway bar links connecting both spindles, is allowing the driver spindle to move a small amount in and out, compared to the passenger side tire that still has weight on it.

I got it aligned a few months ago and it did not help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Here is the alignment specs

 

Not a critic here but isn't sway bar purpose is it to avoid that kind of issues..

 

I was of the understanding that the sway bar only affected up and down articulation and whether or not the opposing side recieved any upward or downward force when the other side was moving

 

No expert, but I am pretty sure dampening up-and-down movement is what the shocks are for.

Otherwise wouldn't the sway bar have to be above the wheels (axle), not out in front?

 

A sway bars job is to help control body roll.

 

Yeah, (anti) sway bar mainly tries to keep the front level in turns. It pushes up slightly on the opposite side.

I suspect that your issue is more with caster, especially with giant tires and a lift. I'd want to see at least 2.5 degrees if not 3, but 3 would put it "out of spec" and many shops won't do that. But you could ask them to max it within spec.

 

From looking at your alignment sheet, I'm going to say that the problem is that you don't have nearly enough positive caster. Not having enough can cause wander.

 

Castor would help but I’m not sure you’ll ever get precise steering with tires that size. It’s been my experience that wide tires with square shoulders tend to wander and pull according to the wear in the road.

 

Get that play you’re seeing in the rack checked out, it’s entirely possible your rack or inner tie rods could be loose.
What do you have for a lift, and UCA’s?

 

When I got the alignment done, they recommended getting adjustable UCA's so that they could get the specs where they wanted. I'm not sure if the caster is what they were trying to change. Would Adjustable UCA'S grant me more room to adjust caster?

I know I'm going to get alot of shit for this but to answer Rusty's question, I'm running a 6 inch fabtech DBL with stock UCA's. I know I'm gonna get alot of hate but it works well for me.

 

Your big ass tires are going to want to wander a lot.

The play you were describing may be just the rack bushings.

Looks like all they touched was the toe. You have to look at your cam adjusters to see if more caster can be adjusted in before looking for new upper arms.

No sway bar may give you more wander feeling since your body and chassis is moving more in relation to what the tire is actually doing.

 

I've had the swaybar.off my 1st gen and 2nd gen after adding aftermarket suspension with stronger coils. The only effect is a little more body roll in corners.

Your caster is terrible as pointed out previously. You are getting shopping cart wobble from that.

You also got a toe and go shit alignment. Go to a different shop and put witness marks your cam bolts to get a sense of how much they adjust them.