I have a 2005 Ford F250 Super Duty 4 dr short bed Lariat 2 wheel drive truck. It has approx. 188K on it. I use it mostly to tow a 2002 Sunny Brook 27ft bumper pull travel trailer. A little over a year ago I replaced the old worn Pirelli tires with a brand new set of Michelins. We were about to set out on a camping trip about 150 miles away from my home. This truck has pulled this same camper for a few years with no issues whatsoever. I had at that time a Curt chain type equalizer hitch with one of the friction bar anti sway devices which worked just fine. After I installed the new Michelins and before we left for the trip, just driving the truck without the trailer just did not seem right. It just felt like I was driving on marshmallows. You had to keep sawing the steering wheel back and forth to stay in the center of a lane. Passing and being passed by cars and trucks on the freeway moved it around and just in general it felt uncomfortable. Driving into a corner it just felt very unstable. A year or so before this, I had just replaced all of the front end parts with new Moog ball joint, tie rods, drag link, sway bar bushings etc, and a new steering damper so all of that is new. The truck drove fine before the tires but after the trouble started. When I added the trailer to it and headed out on the trip it got very scary and you could not hold it in a lane of traffic. It wandered all over the road and made for a white knuckle drive.

I am now on my 3rd set of new tires and have just installed Firestone Transforce under a suggestion from a knowledge front end tech I know. It did not help. I also tried a set of Kumo Crudgeons. Also terrible The alignment has been checked 3 times and everyone has said it is perfect. I took it to a Truck shop who specializes in Super Duty and they adjusted the play slightly in the steering box and also adjusted the rear wheel bearings but made the comment they did not think that was what was causing it. It has been suggested for me to run as much as 90psi in the tires and all that did was make it ride rough. I also bought a new EC trunnion style equalizer anti-sway hitch which made no difference either.

I am at my wits end to get this solved as it is just undrivable as it is. The only thing I have not changed is the steering box but it fells god with no binding or excessive play.

 

Did you have the front end aligned after replacing all those parts?

 

Yes, and it has been checked by 2 other shops after that which both have said it is perfect and they would set it just like it is and so they changed nothing. One of them is who told me to run 90psi in the tired Ford calls for 65 in the front and 75 in the rear. It did not make any difference in the problem but it made it ride very harsh.

 

Not all alignment shops have the parts to do a quality alignment on some Ford trucks. Dealerships are required to have the parts to do a correct alignment.
Not too many places know how to adjust the steering box correctly and I wonder if that is not part of the problem.
Steering box adjustments are more than a simple sector shaft adjustment and most shops don't want to get involved starting from the beginning and that last adjustment is the sector shaft adjustment. When we don't know what is involved , we accept what some shops tell us . I'm surprised the general answer ,, "They all do that". has not come up yet.