Steering and Steer tire issues.

I would have someone inspect the front end first. Someone that knows and cares about what they are doing.

Then I would try greasing the kingpins. May as well grease the entire front end.

When did they do to align the truck? What was adjusted and what are the starting and final specs?

What brand and model of tires are on the steer axle?

Have the shackles and front mounts been inspected?

 

The front suspension has to be really wooped before it will cause tires to wear like that. Most of the time, tires wear like that because either they are junk J.A. Pan tires or they were never installed correctly and have been running out of round ever since. Once they are worn out of round and irregular your truck will always have a shimmy. Simply the tires are no longer round in shape and bounce erratically while rolling going down the road. Stop replacing parts you don't need to! Alignments and shocks are a good start, but if your new tires aren't installed properly it will always have a shimmy no matter what parts you throw at it. If your truck was somewhat stable before the king pins, and now it isn't, something went wrong with that job! Take it back! As for the shimmy, it is caused by the tire rolling out of round or out of balance! You can have tire to rim mis mount where the tire isn't properly seated centered. You can also have rim to hub mis mount where the rim is slightly off center to the hub and rolling oblong. To check this you would jack up the front end, pick the stones out of the steer tires, and spin them up. If they are out of round you will see the tire going up and down as it is spinning! Any good tire guy should know what I am talking about and be able to help you.

 

Also, each time the wheel is removed both mounting surfaces need to be cleaned. This would be the inside wheel surface and the matching part of the hub assembly.

 

Is this budd lug or hub pilot? Try a set of try balance centering pins last company used them and it helped a lot I would jack it up and disconnect steering linkage sounds fishy that its hard to steer after new king pins were installed sounds like they met be to tight

 

When you had the alignment ,did they check for steer out,it's when u turn steering wheel max left then max right ,then back to center. alot of alignment shops don't do this test. It did wonders for the steer tires on trucks i've driven used to get cupping on inside edge of tires & truck used to pull right .the steer out test cured both issues.

 

Just went through this on our 01 FLD. Freightliner shop , who wrve never had good luvk with,said the tire was chopped and shocks needed to.be changed. All of this was after independent mechanic said it was fine just a chopped tire (which was replaced with a new tire that ended up chopped later on) and an alignment. Replaced the chopped tire which wasn't.very old it bad and runs perfect on the truck its on now. The king pins felt loose to us from the start of the year long battle. Took it to the KW dealer who we've had great service with and the ended up doing the king pins. They had to rebore and sleeve the holes. We also balanced the tires.and the truck is now the smoothest and quietest it has ever been, which still isn't very quiet or smooth compared yo the other trucks but it is a freightliner.


Goof luck.